Exercising is beneficial. It doesn’t matter when and how you do it. It doesn’t even matter if you only have time to do a little bit each day. It is better to practice a few minutes of exercise than to maintain a sedentary lifestyle. However, if we are looking for concrete results, it could be interesting to design our routines taking into account the time of the day in which we practice sports. That yes, the result would not be for all the same, because there are Differences between men and women.
This is the conclusion of a study recently published in Frontiers in Physiology by a team of scientists from several US research centers. In the it was found how exercise affects fat loss and physical and mental health in the morningbefore breakfast, or in the eveningjust before dinner.
These types of studies had been carried out before, but they had a huge bias, which sadly is still common in some branches of science. I don’t know took women into account. Even the studies with mice have generally been carried out with males. These scientists have done away with that outdated design of scientific studies and have included women, thus proving that the results are abysmally different. Because, in fact, it is in them that there was a greater variation between the exercise performed during the day or at night.
Exercise during the day or at night?
To carry out this study, the authors had 27 women and 20 men, all of them healthy and active. During twelve weeks they followed a strict diet and exercised in one-hour sessions, four days a week. The breaks were always on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays.
But not all practiced sports at the same time, since they were divided into two groups. One did his exercise sessions in the morning, before breakfast, and the other before dinner. As for the sport performed, it was the same for all: sprints, resistance training, stretching and resistance training.
Throughout the duration of the training, and also before and after, different parameters related to their physical and mental healthand they were also weighed and measured fat and muscle mass.
In this way, they found that women who exercised in the morning burned 7% more belly fat and also reduced their blood pressure by 7%. Furthermore, they developed more leg strength. However, those who did it before dinner improved the upper body strength. And also improved your mood and decreased cravings food.
In men there were no such drastic differences in the results obtained. That is why in previous results it did not seem that there was much variation between hours. However, it was seen that at night it improved slightly your blood pressure and fat oxidation. In addition, his mood improved and fatigue was reduced.
What is this all about?
The explanation for the observed differences is not entirely clear, although there are certain hypotheses regarding what may influence it.
For starters, there may be a distinctly hormonal component. In fact, that is why there are such clear differences between men and women. But not only would there be differences in relation to the sex hormones. It may also be that there were variations in the levels of leptin and ghrelin. Known respectively as the hormones of satiety and appetitethese are governed by the Cardiac rhtyms. This means that ghrelin is secreted around mealtimes and leptin just after.
The introduction of regular exercise routines can slightly alter the rhythms that govern this secretion, affecting both appetite and cravings. The levels of these hormones were not measured in the study, but its authors suspect that they could have been modified.
On the other hand, it is argued that in the case of women the overnight fast increase the relative fat utilization during the aerobic exercise. Basically, by going many hours without eating, your body tends to mobilize those reserves. In addition, resistance exercise maintained over time could favor a greater adaptation and loss of mass in adipose tissue.
As for the men, it is not known why there is hardly any variation between hours. However, it is suspected that this is simply because they were trained men and in them it is more difficult to reach disturbances in your body composition. There is less room for improvement and therefore the time of day the exercise is performed is not as relevant.
In the future, all these causes should be studied in greater depth, as well as the reasons why there are health benefits, such as the reduction of blood pressure in morning exercise for women and night exercise for men. It would also be necessary to carry out the study with more participants, since its own authors recognize that 47 people is not many.
But at least they have done something that no one had done before. Remember that women also do sports and, as such, they deserve to be taken into account in studies on health and physical exercise. Thanks to this, we have verified that perhaps hypertensive women should consider exercising in the morning. Also if you are looking to lose weight or strengthen your legs. But if you want to have greater endurance and increase strength in the back of your body, it may be better to exercise at night.
All this is some tips; although, in reality, exercise is beneficial whenever it is done. You are male, female, cis or trans. The important thing is to move. Have you done sport today? If not, you’re still on time.