Exercise Increases Hunger
Have you ever experienced leaving the gym famished after a healthy strength training and cardio workout?
You are not alone. If you have eaten too long before your work out, your blood sugar may be low so your body is telling you to eat. You should eat between 1 to four hours before exercising to permit your body to digest but to have a sufficient amount of nutrients in your body for energy. Depending on your body, this meal should be small and include a larger portion of carbohydrates than protein. A large meal may make you sleepy and even cause nausea or vomiting with exercise.
Sometimes, even if we have eaten appropriately, however, we still become very hungry after exercise. Studies have shown that exercises indeed can make you hungry. Some people believe fear this may cause weight gain due to an increase in caloric intake. However, at least one recent study has concluded that the overall result will in fact give you a calorie loss.
Researchers in a recent UK study, for example, took 6 men and 6 women through the following steps.
1. Ate the same breakfast.
2. Wait for an hour.
3. One group did 60 minutes of stationary cycling (at 65% max heart rate). The other group did nothing.
4. Wait for an hour.
5. Everyone enjoyed an all-you-can-eat buffet.
The results of this study indicated the following. The exercising group consumed 913 Calories at the buffet but burned 492 calories. The non-exercising group ate 762 Calories but burned 197 calories. The net result was that the exercisers ultimately took in around 144 less Calories.
Most important, we can avoid the hunger pangs through the amount of exercise we do. Studies have shown that hunger will generally increase with excess amounts of exercise. If you exercise too hard or are on a quick weight loss diet, your glycogen stores in the muscles will be depleted. Glycogen is the stored form of glucose in your muscles and liver. When glycogen is depleted, your body turns to protein in the muscles and organs to supply glucose. This may not only cause an increase in hunger and desire for carbohydrates, but it may cause you to breakdown muscle as opposed to building it. This result totally negates your reason for the workout!
Low to moderate amount of exercise will have the best overall effect both for desire to eat and for muscle building. Low to moderate exercise by itself does not increase your appetite. Moderate exercise is considered to be about 60 minutes of exercise, three to five times per week. Moderate exercise actually helps in suppressing appetite and increasing your metabolic rate for up to 15 hours after exercise. A gland in your brain called the hypothalamus is secretes a hormone that inhibits hunger. Exercise helps stimulate this gland to produce more of this hormone. In addition, exercise can actually suppress appetite due to normal digestion. Exercise will take the blood supply from the stomach to the rest of the body, slowing digestion.
We need to also be cautious with "psychological hunger." Some of us may be feeling hungry merely because we feel we deserve to eat that hamburger and fries after we have had a good workout. This is a type of hunger that we need to work against mentally if we want to get the best fitness results.
Therefore to prevent those hunger pangs after exercise, after a small balanced meal at least one hour before working out, and engage in low to moderate exercise. If you are very hungry after exercise, it is very possible that you have exercised too hard.
Have you experienced these hunger pangs after exercise? Tell us your experience and how you solved it!
For more information on this topic, please visit:http://agelessnfit.com/2010/06/24/yes-exercise-does-make-you-hungry/
Exercise Increases Hunger
By: Elizabeth Pons
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