Research shows watching 'easy sports videos' makes you eat more
Many people say that 'when I go to the gym or play sports, I end up eating more.' It's not surprising that exercise leads to increased food intake as a way to reward yourself or replenish your calories, but a new study has shown that even watching videos of simple exercises such as running can lead to increased food intake.
Watching easy sports makes me eat more - ScienceDirect
Will you be watching the Olympic Games? Will you eat more?
https://theconversation.com/will-watching-the-olympic-games-make-you-eat-more-231199
'With so many sporting events being broadcast and our screens constantly being filled with sporting action, a new question arises: does watching sport on a screen affect how much we eat?' said a research team from EM Lyon and Grenoble School of Management in France.
The research team invited 112 students to a laboratory at the Grenoble School of Management to conduct an experiment in which they were given candy to eat after watching a video. The subjects watched either a video of men and women playing sports or a video unrelated to sports , and then had three minutes to eat as many candies as they wanted.
The results of the experiment confirmed that students who watched sports videos ate more candy than students who watched non-sports videos. However, in this experiment, male students ate significantly more candy than female students, so the results may have been driven by male students, and it was unclear how the type of sport watched affected candy consumption.
To investigate the remaining questions, the research team conducted a further experiment with female students only, in which they watched either videos of 'easy sports (such as light running)' or 'difficult sports (long jump, gymnastics, rugby, and rock climbing)' and then sampled the candy as in the first experiment.
The researchers found that participants who watched videos of easy sports ate about 30.1g of candy, whereas those who watched videos of difficult sports ate about 18g of candy. In other words, the difficulty of the sport being watched influences the amount of candy consumed, and it was confirmed that 'watching easy sports leads to more candy consumption than watching difficult sports.'
The 'simple sports videos' that the subjects watched are as follows:
When asked why people eat more when watching videos of easy sports than difficult sports, the research team believes that goal-achievement motivation is related to the question. People work harder when they feel they have not achieved their goals, but once they see progress, they tend to become lazy. For example, people who aim to maintain their health may feel that they are 'getting closer to their goal' after exercising to a certain extent, and may neglect their dietary management after that.
The reason why women in this study ate more when they watched easy sports videos may be related to the fact that women are more likely than men to be 'concerned about their weight and on diets.'
The research team said, 'Our study suggests that simply watching sports can lead to vicarious achievement of fitness goals. When you can imagine yourself doing the exercises you're watching, you feel like you've already exercised, which leads to more extravagant food choices. 'Difficult sports are hard to imagine yourself doing, so it's hard to get a vicarious sense of achievement, while easy sports are easy to imagine and therefore easier to get a sense of achievement, which is likely to lead to increased food intake.
This study suggests that in marketing and policies promoting healthy lifestyles, promoting physical activity that is too easy through videos and other means may increase vicarious achievement and have the opposite effect of increasing food intake. Therefore, in order to encourage exercise, it may be effective to first show hard exercise such as sprinting or marathons, and then show easy exercise such as walking or jogging instead, making it harder to get a vicarious sense of achievement.
Also, if you are on a diet, rather than watching videos of simple jogging or walking, you may be better off watching videos of sports that are difficult for you to do, such as professional matches.
The research team said: 'If you want to maintain your diet, should you watch the Olympics? The answer is of course yes. However, it may be better to choose the physical activities that you find most difficult to perform and watch them without moderation.'
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