Star athletes are super-star sleepers, according to a survey of 14 sports legends. Ninety-three percent of them, including LeBron James and Rafael Nadal, said they aim for eight to 10 hours of shut-eye a night.

It turns out that sleep does more than restore and repair everything from your brain and heart to your exercise-weary muscles and bones. Researchers at the University of Chicago Medicine Sleep Center have found that overweight adults who increase their sleep time by an hour a night eat 270 fewer calories a day than they used to.

That adds up to slow and steady weight loss — as much as 26 pounds over three years if the sleep habit persists.

The study looked at 80 overweight adults who usually slept less than six and a half hours nightly. Those who were helped to sleep longer ended up eating less, and not just because they were awake fewer hours. Their metabolism began to function better, sending more appropriately timed messages about when and how much to eat.

This backs up another meta-analysis of studies that found the risk of obesity increases by 9% for every one-hour decrease in sleep duration.

Trying to lose extra weight? Here's a way that's so easy you can do it in your sleep.

Make a sleep schedule that gets you to bed by 10 p.m. every night. An hour before that, start to slow down: meditate for 10 minutes, ditch digital devices, and have a cup of decaf herbal tea.

And then snuggle into a warm bed in a cool, dark, quiet room.