If you think of dieting as a long, painful process, new research may change your mind: In one study, researchers found that people who cut calories slept better, were in a better mood and had better sex lives.

For people who were a normal weight or overweight (but not obese), reducing daily calorie intake by 25 percent led to an improved quality of life, found the study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

And yes, it also led to weight loss.

“We found that normal-weight and mildly overweight people who wish to lose weight need not worry about decreased quality of life,” said Corby Martin, the director of the Ingestive Behavior Laboratory at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana and the lead author on the study. Rather, “they can actually expect to feel better,” he said.

In the study, the researchers wanted to see if dieting really deserved the bad rap it often gets for making people grumpy and “hangry.”

Researchers have hypothesized that calorie restriction “might negatively affect mood, stamina and libido, and increase irritability, particularly among normal-weight people,” Martin said, adding that few studies have tested this hypothesis.

The researchers looked at 220 people with body mass index scores ranging from 22 (which is considered normal) to 28 (which is considered overweight). The participants were divided in two, with 145 in a calorie-restricted group and 75 in a control group.

Individuals assigned to the calorie-restricted group met with a health coach who helped them follow a lower-calorie diet. (The individuals were each advised to cut their daily calorie intake by about 25 percent.) They were also provided with food for the first few weeks so they could learn how to follow the diet, control their portion sizes and eat foods that were nutritious and filling. The control group received no dietary advice.

Throughout the two-year study period, the participants were asked to fill out questionnaires about their mood, quality of life, sexual function and sleep, Martin said.

The researchers found that the individuals in the calorie-restricted group reported improved mood and sexual drive, reduced tension and improved general health over the course of the study. In addition, the calorie-restricted group lost an average of about 17 pounds by the end of the study period, compared with almost no weight change in the control group.

The researchers also found that cutting calories did not have a negative impact on sleep; rather, people in the control group reported that their sleep quality decreased over the course of the study.

The benefits of calorie restriction were similar throughout the study, Martin said. While it is true that people feel hungry when they start eating fewer calories, “other studies have shown that dieting can improve quality of life fairly quickly,” he said.

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