Exercise in the evening helps you eat less and won't affect your sleep

Many of us skip exercise later in the evening – claiming we are too busy with dinner preparations, parenting or catching up with our latest Netflix binge.

Or else we might avoid the late evening workout on purpose, because we are worried think it will interfere with our sleep.

Yet, we could be missing a trick. A new Australian study linked exercise between 7pm and 9pm with reduced feelings of hunger.

What’s more, researchers found late night exercise has no effect on our ability to get a good night’s sleep – so this excuse no longer holds up.

The research team from Charles Sturt University in Australia asked 11 middle aged men to perform high-intensity cycling exercise at different times of the day (6-7am, 2-4pm and 7-9pm).

The subjects’ sleep and appetite responses to the exercise were investigated.

Exercising in the evening was found to have no detrimental effect on sleep afterwards.

What’s more, exercising at this time meant subjects produced less of the hunger stimulating hormone, ghrelin, which in turn reduced their appetites.

However, don’t go adjusting your fitness regime just yet – especially if you already have one which works for you.

As the study was limited to middle-aged men, so further research is needed to ascertain whether the same holds true for women and for other age groups.

“In the future, we hope to conduct similar studies recruiting women, to determine whether sleep and appetite responses may be different depending on sex.

Also, this study only considered a single bout of exercise; therefore, it would be beneficial to investigate long-term sleep and appetite adaptations to high-intensity exercise training performed either in the morning, afternoon or evening.”

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