Changing eating patterns in response to exercise

Regular exercise and a healthy balanced diet are key to managing weight. However, our recent research suggests people may consume more or unhealthier food on days they exercise. This is because they believe energy stores need to be replenished, or they feel they have earned a reward.

Our recent questionnaire study suggests around 24% of people who exercise change their eating patterns on days they exercise.

Project aims

We want to explore the use of an intervention to reduce eating in response to exercise. The intervention lasts for four weeks and includes:

• Animated videos teaching participants about energy balance and weight management, energy storage and appetite, and how exercise influences appetite, and giving advice about eating before and after exercise. Participants will complete questions after watching the videos to check understanding
• A daily ecological momentary assessment (EMA) questionnaire. This captures and collects participants’ thoughts and behaviours on daily exercise and eating on exercise days at the end of each day
• Weekly individualised feedback, including a descriptive summary of their daily EMA questionnaire responses

We’ll compare people doing the intervention with a ‘control group’ who will be asked to follow standard NHS advice for weight management. We’ll recruit 60 participants through local exercise and social media groups.

What we hope to achieve

We want to find out whether the intervention is feasible. We want to understand how easy it is to recruit and retain participants. We also want to know whether people can stick to it and find it acceptable.

We hope that this will lead to further research in helping people manage their food intake following exercise.