For the first time, researchers have studied how sport can influence eating habits. They concluded that physical exercise increased the amount of food ingested, but that it was possible to counter this effect.
- To check whether or not sports practice increases appetite, the researchers conducted a randomized trial with volunteers.
- The results showed that physical activity led to an increase in immediate food consumption.
- This discovery could make it possible to develop new interventions to optimize weight loss through sport, for example by avoiding cravings immediately after exercise.
To lose weight, get back in shape or increase your cardiac and respiratory capacities, playing sports is the best option. But after a session of the elliptical trainer, running or team sport, we all tend to have a bad habit, which ruins the positive effects of physical exercise: we eat too much.
How to explain this link between sports practice and excessive food consumption? Scientists from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the University of Nebraska (USA) first investigated this question in a study published in the journal Nutrients.
“In the context of sport, we have the phenomenon of people overeating after physical activity, explains Professor Köhler, who practices at the Technical University of Munich. People want to reward themselves and their bodies for being active. So we’re using a hypothetical experiment to find out why people eat more after exercise than when they don’t.”
A subjective assessment of hunger and satiety
To study the influence of exercise on decisions about how much and when to eat, researchers recruited 41 healthy participants (23 females, 18 males) aged 19 to 29 with an average BMI. of 23.7. These volunteers were randomly assigned to either a 45-minute exercise session or a rest period of equal duration at the first visit and followed the other study condition at the second visit.
Before doing their exercise session, participants completed a questionnaire regarding their subjective ratings of hunger and satiety, the amount of food they preferred to eat, and their choice of foods with differing timing of consumption. . Subjects indicated their food quantity preferences by listing the desired serving size for each food. Their preferences were asked for both immediate consumption and subsequent consumption of the food after four hours.
After answering this first questionnaire, the participants performed 45 minutes of aerobic exercise on an ergometric bike. They then responded immediately after a second time to the questionnaire, then a third time after a 30-minute break. The other group took a 45 minute break.
The results showed that, compared to the break, physical exercise led to a greater increase in the amount of food chosen, both immediately after exercise and 30 minutes after. Physical activity also resulted in a greater increase in preference for immediate food consumption, both immediately after exercise and 30 minutes after.
An explanation of the failure of weight loss through sport
These results show that the amount and “urgency” with which a person wants to eat changes during physical exertion, which could help to develop new interventions to optimize weight loss through sport.
“The current findings suggest that physical exertion may cause exercisers to eat larger amounts of food sooner after a workout. Given that weight loss is a primary motivation for exercise for many, and failure to achieve desired weight loss makes quitting exercise likely, it might be a good strategy to think about what you want to eat afterwards before you start exercising”suggests Professor Köhler.
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