Diet Tips: Short Walks Help Reduce Chocolate Cravings
- comments
-
Taking a short brisk walk could help overcome cravings for chocolates and other sugary snacks, suggests a recent study by Larissa Ledochowski and team from the University of Innsbruck in Austria. With the present day increase in the rate of obesity and problems following obesity, there's a great need to cut down the snacking habit especially reaching for chocolates.
Fifteen minutes of brisk walk or mild to moderate physical activity could help reduce the urge for any kind of sugary snack present in obese people as well as people under stress, says the study.
"When snacking has become habitual and poorly regulated by overweight people, the promotion of short bouts of physical activity could be valuable for reducing the urge to consume at times when the person may be particularly vulnerable," said the researcher, reports The Huffington Post.
This research was based on a study that reported physical activity reduced chocolate craving and snacking habits in people who were abstaining from chocolate. The study also noted the previous findings that revealed acute exercise by people under stress attenuates physiological as well as psychological responses, and that exercise could have a role in lessening the crave for mood-regulating food consumption.
About 47 overweight people who reportedly consumed 100g of high caloric sugary snacks, such as chocolates, on daily basis were involved in the study. The participants had BMI not less than 25kg/m2 and not higher than 30 kg/m2, among which 29 participants were women with an average age of 28. The participants were requested to refrain from high caloric diet for a period of three days before they show up for the experimental study.
The participants were assigned in one of the two groups -- one that took 15 minutes brisk walk in treadmill, and the other that sat quietly for a considerable period of time. Both groups underwrnt both activities. All of them were requested to complete a Stroop test to determine the increase in the stress levels.
The participants were then offered high caloric snacks and were asked to unwrap one of the snacks they preferred and handle it for 30 seconds without consuming it, while their emotional arousal and cravings were being measured from time to time in the process. BAsed on the results of the Stroop test, the participants that took up the sitting task were found to have been much stressed than those exercised in the treadmill. The finding suggests that exercise reduced the craving for high caloric diet and related psychological responses, said the researchers.
