When you think weight loss, you think about cutting calories and exercising regularly, but virtually no one thinks about one of the most important factors determining whether you succeed or fail – sleep. If you’re doing all the right things, and the weight just will not come off, new research suggests you look to your sleeping habits as lack of sleep side effects could be hampering your best efforts at dropping those unwanted pounds.

The research team, who has conducted earlier work on sleep restriction and diabetes, found that sleep loss can stop the loss of fat and make your body more stingy when using fat as a fuel. Instead your body burns lean body mass.

While the number on the scale might be lower, those who get enough sleep will lose more fat than their counterparts who are sleep deprived.

In fact, the overweight adult subjects in the study lost 55% less fat, and were hungrier, when they got 5.5 hours of sleep as compared to when they got a more respectable 8.5 hours of sleep.

The research involved 10 overweight adults and was carried out in two, two-week intervals. The subjects ate a low calorie diet and slept for 8.5 hours each night for two weeks, 5.5 hours per night for the other two weeks. Weight lost, fat loss and fat free body mass were measured.

While the subjects lost 6.6 pounds during each period, the difference came with fat loss.

During the weeks they got the 8.5 hours, men and women both lost 3.1 pounds of fat, 3.3 pounds of fat free body mass. When getting only the 5.5 hours of sleep, the subjects lost 1.3 pounds of fat, 5.3 pounds of fat free body mass. When sleep was restricted, subjects saw almost a 10-point increase in levels of the appetite hormone ghrelin.

Ghrelin is the hormone identified as the one that tells you to keep on eating. This naturally brings an increase in hunger that makes it that much harder to stick to your healthy eating plan… to deny yourself that one indulgence. Like everything else, when you don’t get the sleep you need, losing weight is that much harder.

Cutting just an hour of sleep a night can be enough to cause problems.

So if lack of sleep sides effects are interfering with your weight loss, and you’re doing all you can on the eating right and exercising front, making getting good sleep a priority is another critical step toward success. Try for at least 7 hours of sleep a night, and if you’re having trouble, take the time to learn about healthy sleep habits and create a sleeping space that is restful, comfortable and quiet. While you can’t substitute sleep for the other diet basics, being well rested will give you the energy to make healthy foods, the drive to finish that workout, and the stamina to keep going.