We live in a culture that bombards us about the importance of being healthy and controlling our weight, but do these messages actually motivate us to be healthier and lose weight?

My colleagues and I recently studied this question as it relates to exercise.

The unanticipated answer in our new study was “it depends.”

For overweight women, advertisements promoting exercise as a way to improve “daily well-being” more positively influenced motivation than ads featuring weight loss as the reason to exercise.

But, for overweight men, advertisements promoting exercise for “weight loss” or “better health” were the most motivational.

To see a quick one-minute video of me talking about the main study findings – click here.

To learn about the other intriguing findings of this new study keep reading…

We randomized over 1500 midlife men and women who were either “overweight” or “obese” to read one of three advertisements promoting exercise.  The three advertisements promoted physical activity for 1) Better health; 2) Weight loss; or 3) Daily Well-being. (This study was funded with National Institutes of Health’s monies.)

The most intriguing finding was that reading advertisements promoting different exercise benefits actually changed participants’ perceptions of how good it feels to exercise!

Overweight women who read the ads promoting exercise as a way to enhance their daily well-being found exercise more pleasurable than women reading the weight loss advertisements. The opposite was true for men: Those reading the well-being ads reported exercise as less pleasurable than those reading the weight loss ads. (Our future research will investigate this key difference by gender.)

As importantly, reading about daily well-being improved study participants’ body image compared to reading about weight loss – among the overweight women. However, advertisements promoting health showed no statistically different effects compared to well-being and weight loss for women.

SO WHAT:  What does this new study mean for you?

If you are a woman who feels ambivalent about moving your body regularly, consider the many ways physical movement can improve how you feel immediately. Do you want to have more energy? Feel happier? Feel better about your body? Then experiment with scheduling 5-10 minutes of walking on most days – and notice if your mood and body feels better from it.

If you are a man who doesn’t stay motivated to exercise, consider the reasons you’ve tended to start in the past. Ask yourself, “do these purposes for exercising make it a top priority and meaningful for me to fit in?

If you are an organization or health professional, consider developing gender-specific messaging. But make sure to develop an evaluation plan to assess whether this new strategy does a better job of engaging and motivating greater physical activity participation.

My team’s pragmatic research has been getting quite a bit of interest from the media.  Our call to “rebrand exercise” was the featured cover story in the April Aging Well magazine. The Chicago Tribute,  Everydayhealth.com, Arthritis Today, The Globe and Mail (Canada), Chatelaine Magazine (Canada), and Self Magazine also reported on our research between April and June.

If you find this information useful, please tell your friends, family, colleagues, and/or health care professionals through the social media and email icons below.

If you are connected to an organization that is looking for a passionate speaker with “fresh” evidence-based ideas about how to better motivate lasting change check out the rave reviews from people who hear me speak.

If you have personally experienced benefits from changing your reason to exercise/move more or if you are struggling with these issues personally or professionally please share them here – I’ll respond to your comments personally.

Moving Toward Happiness – One Step at a Time,
Michelle