People are always looking for new ways to exercise, get stronger and lose weight, whether it's in the gym, in the living room at home, in the park, alone, with a friend or with a personal trainer. A recent study published in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" revealed that in order to achieve the maximum results there is a certain time of the day when you should exercise.
Scientists claim that our internal body clock plays a key role in how efficiently humans perform at different times of the day. Athletes, for example, tend to achieve their best results in the late afternoon and early evening.
When scientists looked at the performance of swimmers at the Athens, Beijing, London and Rio de Janeiro Olympics, their best results were obtained around 5 p.m.
Jolin Zirath, Professor of Integrative Physiology at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, told Mail Online: "The timing of physical activity may play a role in fine-tuning some of the outcomes. Much of our physiology – from body temperature to heart rate and genes that control metabolism – works in cycles of 24 hours".
The scientists discovered that all tissues and organs are composed of their own unique timetables and are related to the fluctuations of different hormones.
The conclusion that emerged from the study was that it is possible to burn fat in a better way when we train during the morning.
Prof. Zirth claims that there are thousands of genes that produce enzymes, and these help the way in which fat stored in cells is transformed into energy that we use during physical activity.
Prof. Zierth tested this for the first time using mice. He found that when the mice exercised on a treadmill for the first three hours after waking up, their body fat appeared to be much higher when it came to the levels of enzymes used to metabolize fat.
When they looked at it later in the day, the results showed much lower levels of the same enzymes.
"The meaning is that if you train in the morning, it is likely that your body will be more sensitive to breaking down fat and using it as energy," added Prof. Zirth. "Physical activity also helps maintain weight, so morning activity may prevent weight gain."
Scientists predict that the body's preference for burning fat after morning exercise is related to the natural pattern of hormones called glucocorticoids, which control how the body stores and stores fat.
Naturally, the pattern will peak around 08:00 AM and then it will drop to its lowest level around 03:00 AM when people are sleeping.
In conclusion – if you exercise in the morning, it will fit in optimally with the daily cycle since the levels of glucocorticoids are already high, which means that the body is not working to produce more fat cells.
