Can’t Motivate Yourself To Exercise? It’s Time To Eat Like A … Mouse!

WORDS LIM TECK CHOON

A research team in Japan found that mice exercise more on the wheel when their mealtimes are restricted to a certain amount of time each day.

According to Dr Yuji Tajiri from the Kurume University School of Medicine, these mice were given food for a limited time twice a day. Compared to mice which were given unlimited access to food, they ran on the wheel more as a result. 

This could be due to the fact that hunger would boost the production of the hormone ghrelin, which was found in higher levels in the mice that were given limited access to food. This hormone may be involved  in the increased motivation to exercise.

Of course, mice and humans aren’t one and the same, and Dr Yuji believes that more research is necessary to support this finding.

However, if you need to lose weight and/or need that motivation to be more physically active, why not keep your mealtimes within a reasonable amount of time so that you don’t overeat, and avoid eating outside of those mealtimes? This may boost your efforts to stay active. Give it a try! HT

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Reference: Mifune, H., et al. (2019). Voluntary exercise is motivated by ghrelin, possibly related to the central reward circuit. Journal of Endocrinology. Retrieved from https://joe.bioscientifica.com/view/journals/joe/aop/joe-19-0213.xml