Do you lie about exercise?

On_your_marks_(trainers)Research has revealed that half (52%) of people admit to lying about the level of exercise that they do, finding that women were much more likely to lie than men. The study, by www.Sweatband.com, polled 1,556 men and women from around the UK as part of research into exercise habits.

Respondents were initially asked ‘Do you ever lie about the amount of exercise that you’ve undertaken?’ to which 52% confessed that they did. The remaining 48% claimed not to.

When the results were split between the sexes, it appears that women are the more likely to lie when it comes to exercise, with 64% of the total female respondents admitted to doing so, compared to 44% of men.

Of those that confessed to lying, the majority, 68% claimed to ‘exaggerate’ their level of exercise, by adding ‘time to their workout’ (28%), lying about the weight they lift (34%) or how far they’ve run or cycled (41%). However, 22% of respondents admitted that they ‘outright lied’ about exercising; claiming that they’d done some when in actual fact they’d ‘done none at all’.

The study also broke the findings down into a regional map of those most likely to fib about exercising, and found the following places formed the top 5:

  1. Brighton – 67%
  2. Cardiff – 59%
  3. Liverpool – 52%
  4. Newcastle – 44%
  5. Leeds – 36%

It also transpired that it wasn’t only exercise that respondents lied about, as 52% confessed to falsifying their adherence to a diet. 47% of these said that they ‘lied to friends and colleagues’ about what they’d been eating, intimating that they’d been much stricter with food intake than the reality. 24% of these confessed that they did so to ‘make themselves feel better’ about over eating. People with diabetes might lie about either or both, with the main factor putting people off exercise was due to the risk of hypos.

Maz Darvish, CEO of Sweatband.com made the following comment, “There’s often the temptation to let the world know when you’ve undertaken a solid gym session or just come back from a punishing run. When you’re feeling a sense of pride at working hard, it’s understandable to want to share that mood. But is it in the nature of people to be competitive on social media? It would appear so. It might be the case that on your run you’ve stumbled along for a laboured two miles, but feel this doesn’t sound good enough, so fiddle the figures for your friends to suggest that you’ve done five miles. Or maybe you’ve not left the sofa at all and are making it up entirely. The fact is though, in either case, you’re only cheating yourself.”

 

 

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