{"id":534004,"date":"2026-07-10T02:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T02:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/534004\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T02:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T02:20:09","slug":"smelling-chocolate-could-help-you-hit-more-reps-at-the-gym-deseret-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/534004\/","title":{"rendered":"Smelling chocolate could help you hit more reps at the gym \u2013 Deseret News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Study involved 23 moderately trained men performing leg exercises after 10-hour fasts.Dark chocolate aroma reduced hunger and increased exercise repetitions by approximately 18.Milk chocolate aroma improved performance by nine repetitions, but didn’t suppress appetite.<\/p>\n

An exploratory study published Wednesday in Frontiers in Physiology<\/a> found chocolate might help people exercise better.<\/p>\n

In the gym<\/p>\n

The team of researchers from the University of Malaya had \u201c23 healthy, moderately trained men in their early to mid-20s\u201d perform leg-day exercises after fasting for 10 hours. Before the workout, they asked the participants how hungry they were, how full they were, if they had a desire to eat and if they planned to eat in the near future.<\/p>\n

The group of men was split in thirds, and each group was given one of three odors to smell before each workout set: \u201cliquified dark chocolate containing 90% cocoa, liquified milk chocolate containing 60% cocoa or a water sample serving as a control,\u201d according to the report. <\/p>\n

\"\"The gym at Astra Tower in Salt Lake City on Friday, May 30, 2025. | Tess Crowley, Deseret News Sweet results<\/p>\n

The researchers found that after sniffing the dark chocolate, the men in that group reported feeling less hungry and had less desire to eat. They also performed \u201cabout 18 more repetitions\u201d of the exercise compared to the group that smelled water. <\/p>\n

For the milk chocolate sniffers, the results were different. This group\u2019s members said they enjoyed the smell more than the dark chocolate group did, but there were no reported changes in appetite. They did, however, still perform about nine more repetitions of the exercise than the water group.<\/p>\n

The men who performed more repetitions of the exercise did so \u201cwithout increasing their perceived exertion,\u201d senior author Dr. Mohamed Nashrudin bin Naharudin, an assistant professor on the faculty of Sports and Exercise Science at the University of Malaya, said in a news release<\/a> about the study.<\/p>\n

\"\"Caramel and cookies are added to chocolate ice cream at Crispy Cones in Provo on Friday, April 19, 2024. | Laura Seitz, Deseret News Why does this happen?<\/p>\n

In the article, the researchers explained the phenomenon may be linked to \u201cwhat we learn about smells from a young age.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dark chocolate scent serves as a learned cue for a rich, bitter and highly satiating food, which essentially tricks the system into an anticipatory state of fullness,\u201d said Nashrudin bin Naharudin, per Frontiers\u2019 article. \u201cConversely, the sweeter milk chocolate scent acts more like a hedonic reward cue, enhancing training volume by creating a highly pleasant sensory environment rather than by shifting basic metabolic hunger signals.\u201d<\/p>\n

The release said the results are inferential and the effects may not be unique to chocolate. Other scents could produce similar results. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Study involved 23 moderately trained men performing leg exercises after 10-hour fasts.Dark chocolate aroma reduced hunger and increased…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[589,163,85,46,9588],"class_list":["post-534004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fitness","tag-fitness","tag-health","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news-feed-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}