"I slept well, so why do I keep craving late-night snacks?" The answer may lie with the person sleeping next to you. Even if you slept soundly, a restless night for the partner you live with can weaken both your resolve and your confidence in sticking to a healthy diet, according to a new study.
Sleeping well yourself may not be enough — a look at 204 couples
A research team at Concordia University in Canada recently published its findings on the link between sleep and couples' eating habits in the international journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine, British newspaper the Daily Mail reported on the 23rd.
The team surveyed 204 cohabiting couples in Canada with an average age of 42. In each couple, at least one partner was overweight or obese and was trying to improve their diet or physical activity.
Participants answered questionnaires about sleep and eating habits at the start of the study and again after one month and three months. During the first 14 days, they also kept diaries recording how much effort they put into eating healthily.
The results were as expected. People who slept poorly had more difficulty maintaining a healthy diet. As sleep quality declined, so did their efforts to manage their eating habits.
A partner's restless night, and your own diet resolve slips
More striking was that the effects of poor sleep did not stop with the person who lost sleep. When one partner slept badly, the other reported lower confidence in being able to maintain a healthy diet and made less effort to manage their eating habits, even after sleeping well themselves.
The researchers focused on the fact that couples share both their daily lives and their meals. Because people living together often eat the same food, they said, one partner's sleep-deprived choice of unhealthy food can carry over into the other's diet.
The team also analyzed differences by gender. Women overall ate more healthily than men and showed stronger resolve to keep doing so. But there was no gender difference in the link between one person's sleep and their partner's eating habits.
Earlier research had shown that a lack of sleep can worsen an individual's eating habits. The significance of this study is that it examined how sleep may also be linked to the eating habits of the partner who shares that person's home.
Jean-Philippe Gouin, a professor of psychology at Concordia University who led the study, said the social context in which poor eating habits arise must be taken into account, and that it is worth examining how a partner is shaping one's eating habits, whether intentionally or not.
If people want to create lasting change, he added, both partners need to work together to change the home and food environment, stressing the need to build surroundings that make healthier habits easy to sustain over time.
