Can't be bothered to exercise? Blame your bedtime

Image via Kodomut/Flickr

In the eternal battle of Morning People and Night Owls, the latter always seems to lose out.

The structure of modern society largely favours those who rise with the sun (the 9am-5pm working day, for instance), and research suggests that morning people are more proactive and therefore successful in their professional lives. Show offs.

Meanwhile, people who favour the later hours of the day have been found to be more anti-social, self-involved, deceitful and psychopathic. (Anyone want to bet that study was written by a peppy morning type as they sipped a green smoothie at 5.30am? Hmph.)

Unfortunately, creatures of the night, you can't even catch a break when it comes to your fitness routine. According to a small new study, your circadian rhythm is probably thwarting all your good intentions about exercise.

The research, published in the journal Sleep, found a suggestive link between later bedtimes and a lack of motivation to work out.

A group of 123 adults were studied - 20% of whom identified as morning people, 12% as evening people and the rest as 'intermediate types'.  The 'evening people' - those who went to bed later and woke up later - spent more time sitting, especially on the weekend, and reported having a harder time making time to exercise. They tended to feel there wasn't enough time in the day to fit in a workout and had more difficulty adhering to an exercise schedule.

“Even among those who were able to exercise, waking up late made it and being an evening person made it perceived as more difficult,” principal investigator Kelly Glazer Baron explains. She recommends individuals' sleep timing should be taken into consideration when exercise is being recommended.

Poor ol' unsocial, unmotivated Night Owls. It's enough to make you want to give up altogether and go back to bed, huh?