Good news! Rest is healthy! Some would think it is more important to get exercise right away to loose residual pregnancy weight, but every school of exercise I've seen reported wait at least 3 months for a full on exercise routine again. It isn't just about exercise, of course. Ample rest gives the body chance to restore, to use its innate intelligence, and also to reduce the stress levels (cortisol, the stress hormone adds weight to many with chronic aggravation).
Here's some reports on this and related topics, lest you doubt my Mama's and Mama Nature's advice...
Mama Drama Blog Archives, 2008 > April,08
By Tara A. Trower | Tuesday, April 8, 2008, 08:07 AM
The folks at the Harvard Medical School have released the results of an infant sleep study that suggests that infants and toddlers who get less than 12 hours of sleep are more likely to be overweight in preschool, according to an article in today’s American-Statesman.
When combined with TV viewing, the risk of obesity goes up even more. I hunted around a little more for the actual stats in the study (the original article in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine is not available without a subscription) and found this from the BBC: Researchers found infants sleeping less than 12 hours a day and watching more than two hours of television had a 16 percent chance of becoming overweight.
The risk for those who got more sleep and watched less TV was 1 percent, the research into 915 infants showed.
Unfortunately it seems that researchers aren’t sure what the link is, suggesting everything from hormones that might be stimulated from lack of sleep to more time spent eating while awake.
The results are similar to a study released last fall, also by Harvard, that found that postpartum moms who slept more also lost more weight. In that study, women who slept five hours or less a night when their babies were six months old were more likely to have kept on 11 pounds of weight one year after giving birth.
So maybe its not so bad to sleep in rather than heading to the gym.
Reported of course elsewhere, such as NPR news, included the following comments and more direct mention of research source.
The study on infants, toddlers and weight is published in this week's Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. Other studies in the same issue point to more healthful benefits of sleep, including fewer emotional, mental and physical health problems later in life.
Good sleep routines/hours as children get older re sleep more good research confirming my mother's wisdom.
Teens Skipping Breakfast Leads to Obesity
By John Reynold
15:20, March 3rd 2008
The experiment involved 2,216 teenagers, whose breakfast habits were followed for five years, since they were a little under the age of 15. The results showed that the more regularly the teens ate breakfast, the lower their body mass index was. Body mass index is a statistical measure of body weight that can be calculated by dividing an individual’s weight by the square of their height. Apparently, the teenagers who skipped breakfast on average weighed about 2.3 kilograms more than the teenagers who ate breakfast every morning.
According to previous research, an estimated 25 percent of U.S. children regularly skip breakfast, while the rates of obesity have doubled in children and tripled in teenagers over the past two decades.
The results of the study are to be published in the March issue of the medical journal Pediatrics.
Other internet research reports link to sleep shortage and weight gain also.
Note also that artificial sweeteners are being linked to weight gain!
