A new study indicates that you may be able to increase your motivation to exercise by limiting your access to food.
The research, which was done on mice, found that the levels of ghrelin—an appetite-promoting hormone—surged after a period of fasting and triggered mice to exercise.
Motivated mice to exercise
The scientists split the mice into two groups. Group No. 1 was given free access to food and Group No. 2 was only fed twice a day for a limited time. Even though both groups of mice ate essentially the same amount of food, the second group ran significantly more.
In order to try to determine if the ghrelin was playing a role in the mice’s exercise, a group of mice was genetically altered to have no ghrelin. They were put on the same restricted feeding diet as Group No. 2 but ran even less than the mice in Group No. 1 who were given free access to food. But when the mice in Group No. 3 were administered ghrelin, the process was reversed.
Finally, the fourth group of mice was genetically altered to have no ghrelin. Then they were administered ghrelin and given free access to food. They ran significantly more than those with no ghrelin.
Translating the results to humans
For humans, this may translate into fasting intermittently or limiting your food intake to mealtimes to help you stay motivated to exercise.
Although this study was done on animals, the results from mice are often reflective in the results from humans.
“So much more work is needed to confirm that this ghrelin response is also present in people,” says Dr. Yuji Tajiri of Japan’s Kurume University School of Medicine. “If it can be established in clinical practice, it not only opens up new cost-effective diet and exercise strategies but may also indicate a new therapeutic application for ghrelin-mimicking drugs.”
