Lack of Willpower Main Reason for Failing to Exercise After Work

by Rajashri on  September 29, 2009 at 7:52 PM Lifestyle News
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If you do not feel like having the energy to go for a run after a rough day at the office, your limited willpower is to be blamed, says a new study.

Scientists say that if you use your willpower to do one task, it depletes you of the willpower to do an entirely different task.

"Cognitive tasks, as well as emotional tasks such as regulating your emotions, can deplete your self-regulatory capacity to exercise," said Kathleen Martin Ginis, associate professor of kinesiology at McMaster University, and lead author of the study.

The researchers used a Stroop test to deplete the self-regulatory capacity of volunteers in the study.

A Stroop test consists of words associated with colours but printed in a different colour. For example, "red" is printed in blue ink.

Subjects were asked to say the colour on the screen, trying to resist the temptation to blurt out the printed word instead of the colour itself.

"After we used this cognitive task to deplete participants' self-regulatory capacity, they didn't exercise as hard as participants who had not performed the task. The more people "dogged it" after the cognitive task, the more likely they were to skip their exercise sessions over the next 8 weeks. You only have so much willpower," she said

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