A tough leg day may have an unexpectedly simple boost: the smell of chocolate. According to a new study published in Frontiers in Physiology, exposure to chocolate aromas before and during resistance exercise helped participants complete more repetitions without making the workout feel more difficult. "Exposing moderately trained men to chocolate odors right before and between sets of resistance exercise significantly increased their overall training volume without increasing their perceived exertion," said senior author Dr.
Mohamed Nashrudin bin Naharudin, an assistant professor at the Faculty of Sports and Exercise Science at the University of Malaya. "Seeing a substantial increase in repetitions without the athletes feeling like they were exerting themselves any harder is a fascinating psychobiological outcome." Testing Chocolate Scents During Exercise The study included 23 healthy men in their early to mid-20s who were moderately trained. Researchers separated them into three groups and exposed each group to one of three samples: liquified dark chocolate containing 90% cocoa, liquified milk chocolate containing 60% cocoa, or water as a control.
"We know olfaction is powerfully wired into the brain's appetite and emotion networks, but surprisingly, no study has systematically looked at the three-way interaction between smell, appetite, and actual resistance exercise capacity," said Nashrudin Naharudin. Before exercising, the participants had gone without food for at least 10 hours. They then performed leg extensions, an exercise in which a person sits and straightens the lower legs against resistance to lift a weight.
Researchers measured leg extension performance both before and during the training session. Before exercising, participants also rated their hunger, fullness, desire to eat, and intention to eat in the near future. While completing their sets, researchers measured hunger and desire to eat after each 30-second exposure to one of the scent samples.
Dark and Milk Chocolate Produced Different Effects The two chocolate aromas influenced appetite in notably different ways. Compared with both the water control and milk chocolate conditions, smelling dark chocolate was consistently associated with lower hunger, less desire and intention to eat, and greater feelings of fullness before exercise. The dark chocolate aroma therefore appeared to reduce appetite mainly by decreasing hunger and increasing perceived fullness.
Milk chocolate had a different effect. Participants rated its smell as more pleasant than either dark chocolate or water, but the aroma did not significantly change their hunger or appetite. The effects were not limited to appetite.
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