Research
Adherence
Short sleep duration (≤7 hours) interacts with high emotional eating to significantly increase the risk of weight gain and BMI increase in adults.
If you are prone to emotional eating, prioritize getting at least 7-9 hours of sleep. Short sleep combined with emotional eating significantly increases your risk of weight gain. Improving sleep hygiene may help mitigate this risk.
GoodConditionalHIGH confidence
In a sample of Dutch employees, women with a combination of short sleep duration and high emotional eating experienced the greatest increase in BMI over 2 years... In the large Finnish adult cohort... emotional eating predicted higher increase in BMI and waist circumference over 7 years in shorter sleepers (7 h or less), but not in longer sleepers (9 h or more).
Why this rating
Supported by prospective cohort studies showing interaction effects.
Source
Emotional eating and obesity in adults: the role of depression, sleep and genes
Hanna Konttinen · Proceedings of The Nutrition Society · 2020
DOI 10.1017/s0029665120000166
narrative_reviewCited 255×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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