Have you ever wondered why you reach for a snack after going to the gym? Research shows that exercise often results in increased food intake, whether it’s to treat yourself to a job well done or to replenish burned energy. With countless sporting events and screens continually full of sports events, a brand new query arises: can watching sports events on screen affect how much we eat?
The answer is yes. Our research co-authored with Jannine Lasaleta shows that watching sports movies can increase sweets consumption. But there’s more to the story: the difficulty of the sports you watch plays a key role in these effects.
From screens to junk food
To start with, we invited 112 students Experimental laboratory of Grenoble Ecole de Management to look at a movie and test out some candies. Half of the students watched a movie with each men and girls to do sportswhile the other half watched one with none physical activity. We then gave each student a 70-gram cup of candy and asked them to rate its quality for 3 minutes. Students who watched a sports movie ate more sweets than those that watched a movie without physical activity.
So our preliminary test showed that watching sports movies can increase sweet intake, but here’s the twist: male students indulged in significantly more sweets than female students, so perhaps the results were driven by male intake. Moreover, we were still undecided whether the form of sport practiced influenced the consumption of sweets.
To learn more, we invited only female students to look at videos of sports that were easy (light running) or difficult to perform (long jump, track and field, gymnastics, baseball, rugby, and mountain climbing). Students were then asked to check the same candies as before. Students who watched easy sports movie (showing a girl and a person running through different landscapes) ate significantly more candy (30.1 grams) than those that watched difficult sports movie (18 grams).
It can due to this fact be concluded that the ease or difficulty of the exercise shown significantly affects sweets consumption – watching easy sports results in significantly greater sweets consumption than watching difficult ones.
Why is that this happening?
To explain our findings, we checked out research on goal motivation. When people feel they should not achieving a goal, they push harder; but once they see progress, they have an inclination to decelerate. For example, after training, individuals who wish to stay fit may feel they’ve made significant progress after which reduce their efforts. This can result in a decrease in motivation to pursue related goals, similar to healthy eating. Tests shows that achieving smaller goals (like exercise) can make people feel like they deserve a break, which can lead to greater food cravings. Therefore, completing a workout may make you more prone to reward yourself with extra food than if you didn’t complete the workout. And why are women more vulnerable to bingeing on more sweets after watching an easy-to-follow sports movie? Simply because lots of time has passed shown that girls care more about their weight than men and due to this fact their dietary goals are more necessary.
Our research suggests that simply watching sports can result in a way of vicariously achieving fitness goals. When people can imagine themselves performing the activity they’re observing, they feel like they’ve already exercised, which can result in more indulgent food decisions. If they perceive the exercise shown as easy relatively than difficult, they’ll more easily imagine themselves doing it, resulting in a greater sense of progress toward achieving their fitness goals. This perceived achievement can make them feel like they’ve earned the right to indulge and influence their reward looking for, which regularly ends in increased food intake.
So what?
This knowledge could be utilized by policymakers and marketers who aim to encourage healthy lifestyles. By promoting healthy activities by imagining physical activity that seems too easy, people may feel a greater sense of accomplishment, which may backfire and result in increased consumption. We suggest showing a simple exercise (similar to walking or jogging) followed by a tougher exercise (similar to sprinting or a marathon) instead. This approach can motivate people to begin with basic exercises while reminding them that they still have a protracted solution to go to attain their fitness goals. This strategy may provide an alternative choice to promoting physical activity without providing a false sense of accomplishment.
So what’s our takeaway? It’s necessary to recollect how watching sports can impact our eating habits. If you wish to persist with your weight loss plan, watch tougher sports – it’d just help you resist that extra chocolate bar. Moreover, when setting dietary goals, keep in mind that real progress comes from consistent effort, not only imagining that you are doing a workout. Engage in activities that basically challenge you and mix them with conscious eating habits. This way, you can avoid the trap of reaching your fitness goals prematurely and overindulging.
In conclusion, if you want to keep up your weight loss plan, is it price watching the Olympics? Of course, but possibly a greater solution could be to decide on those physical activities that cause you the most difficulty and watch them without moderation.