2009 Studies & Research Blog

One of the added benefits of including exercise in your day is for many people it will help to suppress the appetite, making it easier to stick with your diet and lose weight.

Recently though, researchers wanted to assess how the timing of that meal would impact the effect on the appetite that was seen.

They had twelve men perform three different trials in random order.  The first situation was to just eat a single meal, the second was to exercise two hours after the meal was eaten, and the third situation was to exercise one hour before the meal was to be consumed.

In each situation, they exercised at a rate of 60% of their VO2 max for 50 minutes and the meal they ate had a composition of 70% fat, 26% carbohydrate, and 4% protein.

Hunger ratings and plasma concentrations were measured at baseline and at 1, 3, 5, and 7 hours after the meal had been eaten, while ghrelin and PYY (appetite hormone regulators) were assessed at baseline, 1, 3, 5, and 7 hours after the meal.

The study found that when exercise was performed 2 hours after meal consumption, the appetite suppressing benefits of the exercise was extended and when the subjects exercised before eating the meal, appetite was decreased while there was an increase in plasma ghrelin concentrations.  

There was no impact on leptin levels regardless of meal timing though.  

Thus, the take home message from this study is that exercising after eating one of your meals might help you decrease the appetite even further, making it easier to stick with your diet program.

Reference:
Bushnell, D. et al. (2009) Appetite regulation via exercise prior or subsequent to high-fat meal consumption.  School of Exercise and Nutritional Sciences, San Diego State University. Appetite. Feb;52(1):193-8.