A team of researchers determined the best time to work out if you want to lose weight. After reviewing two years of lifestyle, eating, and exercise habits of more than 5,200 adults, Tongyu Ma, a research assistant professor at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and his team found that those who exercised daily between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. lost more weight than their cohorts who exercised later in the day.

"My cautious suggestion from this study is that if we choose to exercise in the early morning before we eat, we can potentially lose more weight compared to exercise at other times of the day," Ma said, according to NBC News.

Ma noted that his study, which was published in the journal Obesity, has some limitations and admits that a full clinical trial is needed to confirm his team's hypothesis.

"It is not known whether people who exercise consistently in the morning may be systematically different from those who exercise at other times in ways that were not measured in this study. For example, people who exercise regularly in the morning could have more predictable schedules, such as being less likely to be shift workers or less likely to have caregiving responsibilities that impede morning exercise," Rebecca Krukowski, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist with expertise in behavioral weight management, said in a press release.

Jeffrey T. Mason