Here's why people find it hard to exercise
| Oct 13, 2018, 08:00 IST
Want to head to the gym but don't feel like doing it? For the longest time, we thought that exercise was related to discipline and lack of exercise was related to laziness. However, now a study has found that exercise has more to do with the mind than the body. “In daily life, this exercise paradox is illustrated when people who have the intention to be physically active take the escalator/elevator rather than the stairs,” says Matthieu Boisgontier. “Our study is the first one to directly analyze the activity of the brain to understand the exercise paradox."
For the research he teamed with Boris Cheval, Ph.D., a post-doctoral researcher studying exercise physiology at the University of Geneva. They showed a group of people some images of activities aligned with “movement and active lifestyle.” They were then asked to use a human figurine to approach physical activity on a computer.
“People spontaneously tend to approach sedentary behavior, but because the task asked them to avoid sedentary behavior, they had to inhibit their automatic tendency,” Boisgontier said. “The inhibition is evidence that people tend to approach sedentary behavior at the brain level. People are able to avoid sedentary behavior but they have to invest more resources in this task.”
For the research he teamed with Boris Cheval, Ph.D., a post-doctoral researcher studying exercise physiology at the University of Geneva. They showed a group of people some images of activities aligned with “movement and active lifestyle.” They were then asked to use a human figurine to approach physical activity on a computer.
“People spontaneously tend to approach sedentary behavior, but because the task asked them to avoid sedentary behavior, they had to inhibit their automatic tendency,” Boisgontier said. “The inhibition is evidence that people tend to approach sedentary behavior at the brain level. People are able to avoid sedentary behavior but they have to invest more resources in this task.”