WANT TO LOSE FAT? SLEEP ON IT

Attention, dieters: You can cut all the calories you want to lose weight -- but without enough sleep, you won't be losing the right kind.

According to an Annals of Internal Medicine study, cutting your time in bed from 8.5 hours to 5.5 hours causes you to lose proportionally less fat. Ten overweight dieters who cut their caloric intake by 10 percent lost a comparable amount of weight -- about 6.6 pounds -- but the type of weight they lost was very different, depending on how long they slept.

For dieters who had a full night's worth, more than half of the weight they lost was fat. But when the researchers cut three hours off their bedtime, only a quarter of the weight the study participants lost was fat. That means the other 75 percent being burned was nonfat mass -- such as protein, valuable building blocks of muscle and other body tissues.

How could this be? The researchers theorize that it's because of the way sleep levels affect the levels of ghrelin, a hormone that stimulates hunger and promotes fat retention -- two symptoms you don't want when you're trying to lose weight. Sleep loss, the authors write, "amplifies" these ghrelin-associated changes.

Moral of the study? Put aside the work, or that late-night TV show, and get some shut-eye. Compared with exercise and diet, it's the easiest part of healthy weight loss.

LOS ANGELES TIMES

OUT AND ABOUT

Looking for an easy activity before the snow falls?

Hiking trails are abundant throughout the Twin Cities metro, but several are geared for people looking for a "gentle" hike. The Three Rivers Park District says its "Trails at Your Own Pace" locations include 1.1-mile trails at the Hyland Lake Park Reserve in Bloomington, Elm Creek Park Reserve in Maple Grove and French Regional Park in Plymouth. Other parks within the system have even shorter hikes.

And if you want to pack in a lot of hiking between now and the end of October, there's still time to take part in the district's Autumn Hiking Adventures program. Those who hike four of 16 designated trails can purchase a 2010 medallion.

For information on both hiking programs, go to www.threerivers parks.org, click Activities, then Hiking.