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This new study suggests that working out during this time is best when it comes to treating your metabolic health.

Before you head outside to enjoy a morning run in the summer sun, a new study found that evening exercise might be the most effective way of improving metabolic health. Researchers discovered that exercise performed during this time were able to better moderate the negative side effects of a greasy diet, something that morning exercises weren’t able to do.

The study, published in the journal Diabetologia, narrowed its focus on sedentary and overweight men. Unlike other studies where workout timing is introduced and the important health data is gathered, these researchers also controlled participants’ meals.

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Participants only consumed a diet made up of fatty foods, which were sent to their homes through delivery. After five days of following the diet, they returned to the labs to have their vitals taken and began their workout sessions, scheduled in the mornings or evenings depending on the group they were put in.

For all groups, results were not that great after consuming fatty meals for five days straight. But the group that worked out in the mornings had the same high cholesterol and molecular patterns in their blood that suggested cardiovascular and heart disease. The evening group had far better results.

After five days of workouts, they had lower cholesterol levels and showed better cardiovascular health in their bloodstream. They also developed better blood sugar control in the evenings, something that neither the control group nor the group that worked out in the morning experienced.

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In short, evening exercise was capable of reversing some of the harms of a fatty diet, while morning exercises didn’t.

This exercise was conducted on a limited pool of subjects, under highly controlled situations. It doesn’t suggest that working out in the morning is bad (any type of workout is better than no workout) but it does suggest that evening workouts are capable of affecting the meals you consumed that same day, especially if they’re fatty and harmful for your cholesterol.

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