The best-ever reason for wearing exercise clothes all day.

Mamamia heath and fitness writer Nat has a confession to make.

Right, confession time. I am that person that often wears exercise clothes out and about – even if I’m not actually planning on exercising.

Go ahead, judge away. I don’t care. I spend enough time during the week trying to think of different, socially-appropriate outfits to wear to work every day. When my spare time rolls around, I have little to no interest in wearing anything that isn’t:

a) comfortable,

b) practical, and

c) involves no brain power when it comes to putting it together.

Exercise clothes cover all of the above requirements, and if you buy flattering exercise gear, then you typically don’t look half bad. To me, there is no shame whatsoever in wandering around the shops wearing a nice pair of Adidas tights with a loose-fitting Female for Life yoga top over it.

However – there are a lot of haters out there. A lot of people who think it’s absolutely ridiculous to wear workout-y clothes unless you are actually puffing away on a treadmill.

I know this, because I am surrounded by them. Once, I donned an uber-comfortable Lululemon top for a flight, paired with my most travel-friendly pair of Running Bare tights, and Lucy laughed so hard that she had to take a photo and commemorate the occasion forevermore.

But. I have news that is a giant ha-ha to Lucy, and music to the ears of anyone that – like me – rolls out of bed in the morning and finds it far easier to reach for the sports crop than the real bra.

Scientists have found that by just getting changed into your exercise gear, you’re more likely to be motivated to exercise.

That’s right. The discovery came after an experiment at Northwestern University in Illinois, US; researchers grabbed two groups of people and dressed one group in lab coats and the other group in regular clothes. The two groups of people then had to perform various tasks; the group wearing lab coats generally performed better.

This apparently relates to something called “enclothed cognition”, which basically means that if you are wearing clothes that you associate with a particular effect, you might be prompted to do something related to that effect.

The Atlantic looked into this further, speaking to researcher Adam Galinsky:

“It’s all about the symbolic meaning that you associate with a particular item of clothing,” Adam said. And he thinks the study’s results can be applied to many more fields, including activewear and fitness. “I think it would make sense that when you wear athletic clothing, you become more active and more likely to go to the gym and work out.”

They also pointed out that this is the whole thing with Lululemon; the brand specifically set out to make clothes that are good quality and veer very much towards the fashionable side of things, while still being practical. And other brands are very quickly following suit – producing cute, flattering clothes with catchy logos and the latest of the neon colours.

The psychology? If you feel good in the clothes, you’re more likely to buy them. And wear them around more often than just your hour-long weekly yoga session.

And if you wear them around more often? You might just exercise more often, too. Because in the back of your mind, your brain is saying: “Hey. You’re in running tights. You should probably do something that makes use of them.”

So this Christmas – perhaps have a couple of days where you leave the summer maxi in the wardrobe and pull on the workout gear instead. If you’re struggling to actually get motivated over the season, it might just be that little extra step that kicks you out the door.

Need new workout gear? Here are some of my favourites:

What do you think about this study? Do you already wear exercise gear when you’re not exercising?