Throw away those diet pills and get your gym gear ready because scientists have developed a new weight loss method that will soon have you sweating up a storm.

A hormone pill that boosts your motivation for exercise was recently developed by Swiss scientists. According to an article from the Daily Mail, the team found that when the brain hormone erythropoietin (EPO) was elevated in mice, it motivated them to run harder and faster.

Three groups of mice were compared – mice with no treatment, those injected with human EPO and those modified to produce human EPO in the brain.

The two groups that were administered with EPO ran faster and longer than the untreated mice.

Aside from this increased propensity for exercise, the pill might help those suffering from depression because the hormone EPO likely lifts a person's mood, according to researcher, Max Gassmann.

The team believes their finding could one day be packaged in the form of a pill used to treat those suffering obesity and even Alzheimer's since previous research suggests that exercise helps diminish symptoms.

"If you can't put exercise in a pill, then maybe you can put the motivation to exercise in a pill instead," said Dr Gerald Weissmann, Editor-in-Chief of The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal (FASEB). 

"As more and more people become overweight and obese, we must attack the problem from all angles. Maybe the day will come when gyms are as easily found as fast food restaurants."

The team from the University of Zurich published their findings on FASEB online.