The relationship between sleep habits and weight gain

Some people undergo WLS and lose significant weight only to gain some or all of it back years later. I asked my nutricianist "Why". Her response was grazing. Grazing is to eat small portions of food, as appetizers or the like, in place of a full-sized meal or to snack during the course of the day in place of regular meals.

A recent study by University of California, Berkeley, may have found a correlation between sleep and body mass index (BMI). Breakfast and breakfast skipping is associated with weight gain.”

This study seems to go hand-in-hand with another study. Another recent study found that reducing the eating window (the hours per day that one eats) reduces weight. http://acsh.org/2015/09/picture-this-a-food-app-that-could-improve-public-health/ The results from this study published in Cell Metabolism showed that the majority eat over a 15-hour period each day. Some research suggests that limiting the “eating window” to 10-12 hours per day may contribute to weight loss. Their sample size was small, but of their volunteers interested in weight loss researchers set the smart phone app to help them restrict food intake to a 10-hour window. Without changing the types of food they were eating over 13 weeks, this volunteer group lost an average of 3.5 percent of their initial weight per person.

So it appears that to maintain the weight loss after you reach the Maintenance stage, one needs to control "Grazing". This includes limiting your "eating window" to around 10-12 hours per day and getting the nominal 7-9 hours of sleep each night.