In relation to achieving your fitness goals and reducing weight, the timing of your workouts could make a difference.

A study, published within the journal Obesity, showed that exercising within the morning could potentially lead to a lower body mass index and slimmer waistline when put next to midday or evening exercise routines.

Individuals who engaged in morning workouts, specifically between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m., had a median body mass index (BMI) of 27.5, while those that exercised during midday (9 a.m. to 4 p.m.) and in evening hours (5 p.m. to eight p.m.) had a median BMI of 28.3.

The outcomes remained consistent no matter the gender, ethnicity, educational background, tobacco or alcohol use and sedentary behavior (activities that involve minimal physical movement) of the participants.

Researchers collected health and activity data from 5,285 individuals who took part in a National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 2003 to 2006. The timeframe was chosen since it marked the initial usage of accelerometers, or activity trackers, in surveys.

After assessing the participants’ initial BMI and waist circumference, they were asked to wear activity trackers for a duration of ten hours or more per day for 4 to seven days.

It was observed that those that did exercises within the morning exhibited the bottom BMI and waist size despite the fact that all participants met the really helpful physical activity guidelines of a minimum of 150 minutes per week.

Rebecca Krukowski, a clinical psychologist who makes a speciality of behavioral weight management, highlighted the advantage of scheduling morning workouts to avoid distractions from emails, calls or meetings.

“Individuals who exercise recurrently within the morning could have more predictable schedules, equivalent to being less more likely to be shift staff or less more likely to have caregiving responsibilities that impede morning exercise,” Krukowski, who was not a part of the study, told CNN. “Predictable schedules could produce other advantageous effects on weight that weren’t measured on this study, equivalent to with sleep length (or) quality and stress levels.”

The research team couldn’t establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship between morning exercise and changes within the measurements. It was since the participants’ BMI and waist size were measured only before the activity tracking period, but not afterward.

Lead study writer Tongyu Ma, a research assistant professor of rehabilitation sciences on the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, said the team would do more research to discover potential links between morning workouts and reduced BMI and waist size to further solidify the findings.

Published by Medicaldaily.com