Best Time to Exercise for Metabolic Health

Fitness professionals love to debate many topics, the best time to exercise being one of them. While no one time is better than another for all individuals or outcomes, findings from an Australian study showed that, for men who were overweight and at risk of diabetes, early-evening training was superior to morning training for managing blood sugar levels and improving fat metabolism. Researchers recruited 24 inactive men at risk of developing type 2 diabetes and fed them a high-fat diet for 11 days. The men trained in the morning, in the evening or not at all.

“We found that exercising in the morning or evening induced similar improvements in cardio-respiratory fitness, but nocturnal glycemic control only improved in the evening exercise group,” said lead study author Trine Moholdt, PhD, head of the exercise, cardiometabolic health and reproduction research group at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. “This study does suggest that evening exercise may be more beneficial for people with disrupted metabolism than the same exercise done earlier in the day, but I think it is vital to point out that it is much more important that you keep exercising than what time of day you are doing it.” The study was published in Diabetologia (2021; doi:10.1007/s00125-021-05477-5).

See also: Does Time of Day Affect Training?