Relationship between appetitive motives and non-exercise lifestyle in a young adult population

We aimed to examine the association of appetitive motives with a non-exercise lifestyle, defined as exercising less than once per year, in a young adult population.

We asked university students to answer questions about their exercise habits. We also assessed their appetitive motives, with or without hunger, by using a simple questionnaire in a preliminary survey, and we assessed the hedonic motives to consume palatable foods by using the Power of Food Scale (PFS) in the main experiment.

On multivariate logistic regression analyses in the preliminary survey (n=119) adjusted for age, gender, and body mass index (BMI), appetitive motives under the condition of hunger were positively associated with the non-exercise lifestyle. In the main experiment (n=268), simple regression analyses revealed a positive association between the non-exercise lifestyle and the subscale scores of factor-2 of PFS related to physically present foods. On multiple regression analyses adjusted for age, gender, and BMI, the aggregated scores and the subscale scores of factor-2 of PFS were positively associated with the non-exercise lifestyle.

These findings suggest the intriguing possibility that appetitive motives under the condition "with hunger" and those "with hedonic consumption" can be suppressed even by infrequent exercise.