Exercise and eating motivation in weight loss maintenance: revisiting the motivational spillover with the NoHoW study

Physical activity and nutrition-related behaviors are crucial factors in maintaining weight loss. The interplay between the motivations to consistently engage in both behaviors is a fundamental yet understudied topic. The current study examines the reciprocal effects between exercise and eating motivation and their effect on steps and energy intake over a 12-month period.

Data were gathered from 678 NoHoW participants (a weight loss management intervention) in 3 European countries (the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Portugal), with baseline, 6-, and 12-month measures (46 ± 11 years, 70% women, 83 ± 15 kg), assessing exercise motivation, eating motivation, steps taken, and energy intake. The analytical plan included latent growth models and cross-lagged panels.

Both autonomous and controlled motivation models indicated a positive spillover effect from exercise to eating motivation and vice versa for 12 months. Increased exercise autonomous motivation was linked to heightened eating autonomous motivation, and the same relation was observed with controlled motivation. However, when it came to the relationship between motivation and steps taken or food intake, the effects were either smaller or nonexistent, except for higher initial levels of exercise-controlled motivation being associated with higher food intake after 6 months.

These findings suggest that during the yearlong study, there was a motivational spillover from exercise motivation to eating motivation and vice versa. This suggests that interventions focusing on increasing motivation toward behavior change in one domain also benefit other domains and thus might help increase the effectiveness of interventions.