subject: How Exercise Can Affect Hunger [print this page] Can the physical act of exercise really make a difference in a person's appetite? At this time researchers and most others understand that exercise increases the amount of calories a person burns during the day. As individuals at more lean body mass it also increases the number of calories the body will burn at rest. But, does exercise really reduce your appetite?
The answer to that question is still not well understood nor agreed upon by researchers and physicians. Some believe that exercise will reduce the appetite more in men than in women while others have found that the intensity and length of exercise will dictate whether or not an individual experiences a reduction in appetite.
In a study published in June 2008 researchers found that exercise did not suppress appetite in women who were obese as it did in women who were lean. This lack of appetite suppression may account for the greater amount of food intake that obese women eat after exercising. This information should help therapists and physicians to understand the limitations that exercise pass in appetite suppression.
In another study reported in 2009 researchers found that exercise appeared to simultaneously make people hungrier but more satisfied by a meal. The difference in these responses vary from person to person. The study looked at 58 overweight and obese adults who started an exercise regimen and found that exercise would boost hunger before the meal compared to how they felt before they exercise.
On the other hand, this study also found that the participants were more easily satisfied by their breakfast meal than they had been before becoming active. There were other more subtle differences between individuals who were more successful at their weight-loss efforts.
Researchers found that in general the individuals who were exercising and did not meet their expected weight loss were hungrier right before breakfast and throughout the day as compared to their hunger ratings at the beginning of the study, prior to exercising. In contrast, those individuals who do lose weight found that their pre-rectors appetite increased after becoming active but they were not hungrier throughout the day.
The bottom line from this research is that individuals should not stop exercising if they start feeling more hungry than normal or fail to lose the weight they had been hoping to lose. Instead, they should look for ways of satisfying their hunger that is reduced in calories. It is well documented that exercise has other health benefits, such as improved cardiovascular fitness, lower blood pressure and lower cholesterol even when weight loss is modest.
Some researchers believe that although weight training and cardiovascular exercise will affect the production of specific hormones believed to play a role in stimulating hunger it is the cardiovascular and aerobic exercise that has the strongest effect on decreasing hunger.
In another study published in the American Journal of physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, researchers looked at the effect that exercise had on to hormones, ghrelin which stimulates appetite and peptide YY that suppresses it. This study used a small group of 11 men. The group was split into three. The first performed vigorous workouts on the treadmill for 60 minutes and then rested for seven hours; the second group did resistance training for 90 minutes and rested for 6 1/2 hours and the third group got no exercise at all.
During this study participants rated their hunger and researchers monitored hormone levels. They found that the participants who worked on the treadmill had a drop in ghrelin but a rise in and peptide YY. Those who did resistance workouts only lowered their ghrelin and did not affect their peptide levels. Those on the treadmill reported more suppress appetite than those who did resistance exercises. In both instances the appetite suppression effect lasted approximately 2 hours.
Researchers theorize from this study that dieting without exercise is less effective way of losing weight. This study did not examine whether the individuals changed the amount of food they consumed after exercising.
Based on studies that have been performed thus far it is wise to assume that individuals must monitor for themselves whether or not exercise is able to reduce their appetite or suppress their appetite for any length of time following the exercise. There is also some evidence to believe that this suppression may carry over to the next day.
All of this information indicates that we must be our own best advocates and understand the effects that exercise has on our own body. By recognizing how we feel both before during and after exercise we are better able to monitor our own calorie intake while still enjoying the benefits of cardiovascular and peripheral vascular health.
