Can consistent morning exercises help you lose weight faster?

“Morning workouts are beneficial because your happy hormone called serotonin is at its highest level during sunlight hours. That’s why you feel your energy is liberated after a good night’s sleep. Ideally, this is the best time to exercise. In the evening its levels are usually much depleted. As per our circadian rhythms, our physiological response to the exercise in the morning is 100 per cent,” says holistic health expert Dr Mickey Mehta.

Why do we need maximum levels of serotonin? “Not for nothing is it called the body’s feel-good hormone. When serotonin is at normal levels, you are calm and in control of things and do not feel anxious or stressed. Since most of your body’s serotonin is found in your gut, it speeds up digestion, controls appetite and takes care of your gut health, which is increasingly becoming a marker for controlling all kinds of diseases. Your brain needs serotonin to make melatonin, a hormone that regulates your sleep-wake cycle. Morning exercise can move up the time for melatonin release while exercise in the evening delays melatonin timing,” adds Dr Mehta.

However, functional medicine expert Vijay Thakkar argues for some flexibility. “Studies provide a compelling case which could potentially reshape weight management strategies. Some studies have found consistent morning workouts as being more effective than their evening counterparts in several key metrics, such as enhancing metabolism and improving insulin sensitivity. This echoes previous research suggesting that aligning exercise with circadian rhythms could improve health benefits. Having said that, from practical and empirical viewpoints, exercising any time of the day is the most critical factor in fighting obesity. If regular morning exercise is not feasible and sustainable, then evening workouts are superior to ‘no workouts’ in improving your metabolic health. So, keeping a sustainable exercise routine is critical. We should continue to engage in physical activity in all forms and at all times of the day while also understanding the potentially more remarkable benefits of morning exercise,” he says.

Highlighting the need for consistency rather than being fixated on the morning routine, he says, “The good news is that we can increase the amount of fat-releasing hormones and diminish fat-storing hormones in the body through regular physical activity, influence our health positively, and reverse our body condition by making the right lifestyle choice. When we strive for this balance, we increase our metabolism, through which the body’s energy expenditure increases, so a state of negative energy balance required for weight reduction is attained, which over time leads to lesser weight and reversing of obesity. This balance can only be brought about by regular exercise and can improve our metabolic health.”

So what exercise patterns should be followed for controlling obesity? Dr Mehta advocates “moving, breathing, circulating and challenging your body in a calibrated way, either using your body weight or resistance training or using heavy equipment in the gym under supervision.” For others there are options like running, cycling, swimming and yoga. “Western science has always spoken about input and output, so ingestion of food versus output of energy, calories utilised and calories earned, all need to be monitored,” he adds.