Aerobic exercise lowers perceived appetite, researchers say

By Scott Douglas

If you're exercising to lose weight, you're more likely to feel full if your workout routine features aerobic exercise over resistance training, according to a study published in the journal Metabolism.

In the study, Australian researchers divided overweight, sedentary men into three groups. One group did aerobic workouts three times a week for 12 weeks, one did resistance training three times a week for 12 weeks and one, well, did nothing beyond continuing their sedentary ways. Before and after the 12-week period, the researchers measured the subjects' perceived hunger and fullness, as well as appetite-related hormones, both when the subjects hadn't eaten for a while and immediately after a liquid carbohydrate meal of about 1250 kilojoules.

Over the course of the study, perceived hunger didn't change for any of the groups. Put another way, they all reported having similar appetites. But the ones who had gotten in the habit of regular aerobic exercise reported that they felt fuller sooner than they had at the beginning of the study. In contrast, the ones who had done 12 weeks of resistance training reported no change in how quickly they felt full after a meal.

This was true even though most of the appetite-related hormone levels didn't change in either of the exercise groups during the study. The one hormone level that did change, leptin, changed in both the aerobic and resistance-training groups, so its change is unlikely to explain the difference between the groups' feelings of fullness.

As a result of their findings, the researchers concluded:

Aerobic exercise training is associated with an increase in satiety, while an equivalent period of resistance training is not.

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