Hunger Control and Strength Training
Have you finished a workout and felt the need to gorge yourself? Then you headed straight for the nearest eatery to eat all that was possible for you. Have you ever completed training and realized you weren’t hungry, even though you expected to be? That should not have happened. Both of these scenarios demonstrate how exercise affects your hunger. You may believe exercise will always make you hungry, but the truth is more subtle.
It seems like it needs to be clarified. Depending on the type of exercise you do, your body, and what you’re eating, it can make you hungry or less hungry. Understanding how activity impacts hunger can help you plan your pre- and post-workout nutrition and your food intake to help you achieve your fitness goals. This is so important to keep you on track with your targeted fitness goals.
Appetite vs. Hunger
Hunger and appetite are not the same things. Hunger is a physical feeling when your body realizes it needs more food. Hormones and chemical reactions in your body cause this feeling. This reaction can occur for several reasons.
Appetite is a mental response that can be caused by being bored, sad, or seeing or smelling delicious food. Hunger, thirst, and digestion are all regulated by hormones. These factors can make you eat even if you aren’t hungry.
Even in scientific literature, the terms hunger and appetite are interchangeable. Using language to discuss separate functions helps explain how psychological and physiological food needs differ.
Remembering that nutrient-dense foods fuel your training and assist your body in healing after exercise is essential. Concentrating on food quality is critical for peak performance and well-being, regardless of your objectives.
Nutrition Fundamentals
Hormones That Regulate Hunger
Several hormones and hormonal interactions influence hunger. Knowing how these hormones affect appetite will help us understand how different types of exercise interact with these hormones and, as a result, hunger. The following are the key players:
Leptin: High leptin levels cause the hypothalamus to suppress appetite. Adipose tissue (body fat) secretes leptin into the bloodstream. Higher leptin levels will have more body fat; leptin levels increase when you eat.
Ghrelin: Ghrelin stimulates hunger by interacting with the hypothalamus. When your stomach is empty, the stomach and small intestine create it.
Adiponectin: Adiponectin secreted by fat cells and increases as your body’s fat level decreases. When your body fat percentage rises, your adiponectin levels fall.
Cholecystokinin is produced in the small intestine both during and after eating. It speeds up the flow of bile and digestive enzymes into the small intestine, making you feel less hungry and more packed.
Peptide YY: Peptide YY decreases hunger for around 12 hours after a meal and is in the big and small intestines.
Insulin is a hormone that controls how much sugar is in your blood, makes you feel less hungry, and is found in the pancreas.
Glucocorticoids: Excessive glucocorticoids enhance hunger, whereas a cortisol shortage reduces hunger. Your adrenal glands produce them, and among their many functions is inflammation control.
The Benefits of Vigorous Exercise
Research on how intense exercise affects hunger suggests that your HIIT workout may make you feel less hungry afterward.
According to some studies, this impact does not lower overall calorie consumption on the training day but reduces appetite for a short period after the workout. Yet, the scientific community is divided on this.
A study tracked the levels of certain hunger hormones following high-intensity continuous training repressed ghrelin and appetite. Blood samples were taken immediately before and after exercise and 30 and 90 minutes later.
This study tracked calorie intake before, during, and after exercise and discovered a decrease in overall caloric intake on the day after. These effects are with continuous training at a moderate intensity, but they are strongest after sprint interval training. In this study, the day after high-intensity ongoing training, people ate less than the day after moderate-intensity ongoing training or did not exercise (control group).
Compensatory intake is an important consideration. This idea is about whether or not making yourself feel less hungry makes you eat less overall. Suppose you lower your hunger but don’t modify how much you eat over time. In that case, it makes little difference to your calorie intake (calories in versus calories out).
The Advantages of Moderate Exercise
Moderate exercise will affect hunger, appetite, and how many calories you eat in different ways. Research shows that most people don’t experience changes in their needs after moderately intense exercise.
By making peptide YY more active, moderate exercise can make you feel less hungry for about 12 hours; this shows that moderate exercise, which burns calories and makes you use more calories, does not make you eat more. Yet, eating after a workout is critical for recovering glycogen and mending muscle.
Research shows moderate exercise can delay hunger but does not lower food intake. Yet, it does not boost food consumption compared to sedentary people; if you exercise, you can lose a calorie deficit by eating more later if that is your aim.
If you exercise purposefully, you may need to eat more calories to gain or keep weight or improve your performance. Adding more to your usual meals, especially nutrient-dense protein and carbohydrates will help you exercise and gain lean mass.
Hunger Control and Strength Training
Depending on the activity, you can undertake light, moderate, or rigorous strength training. For example, strength training with more extended sets, multiple reps, and lesser weights may not raise the heart rate significantly. In contrast, powerlifting with more significant consequences can increase the heart rate to near maximum.
On the other hand, strength training is different from regular cardio workouts because it hurts your muscles more than other types of exercise. This form of injury is required for muscles to grow more substantial.
Suppose your goal is to gain muscle and lean mass. According to certain studies, strength training might cause a significant rise in hunger. Others, however, have recommended that there should be no increase in calorie consumption. In that case, you will need to consciously ingest more calories to build new tissues and compensate for the calories burnt during exercise.
Although it is less likely, you can grow muscle while losing fat, especially if you are new to strength training. You need to keep a small calorie deficit while eating enough protein to keep your muscles growing.
How Might These Impacts Help You Achieve Your Goals?
Including exercise in your daily routine has numerous health and wellness benefits beyond body weight. Still, you may have specific weight-related goals, such as losing body fat, building muscle, getting more energy, or keeping your weight the same. In such a scenario, there are a few things to consider regarding how your workout may affect your appetite.
Muscle Gain and Weight Gain
Suppose you aim to maintain or gain weight. If that’s the case, adding exercise to your daily routine will almost certainly mean you need to eat more calories to make up for the calories you burn. To put on muscle and increase lean body mass, you need to eat more calories, focusing on getting enough protein.
You can experiment with adding more food to each meal or an extra feed, such as post-workout replenishment. For the best outcomes, focus on nutrient-dense foods that fuel performance, particularly complex carbs and lean protein. 18
Healthy foods to include are eggs, salmon, and vegetables.
Tofu, poultry, lean cuts of meat, beans and legumes, whole-grain bread, starchy vegetables, sweet potatoes, oats, and quinoa are all good protein sources.
Losing & Dropping Weight Bodyfat: Exercise as part of a healthy lifestyle can help you lose weight and keep it off, especially when accompanied by a nutritious, well-balanced diet.
Exercising is a great way to achieve weight loss, body fat reduction, and weight maintenance goals. Significantly resistance exercise can help stop muscle loss and the slowing of the metabolism that comes with it after weight loss.
If you’re attempting to lose weight but the scale isn’t moving as quickly as you’d like, consider that you could be reducing body fat while maintaining or even developing lean muscle mass, this is known as body recomposition, and it most commonly occurs in those who are new to weight lifting. But it is also possible for people who work out, as long as they eat enough protein.
Finally, exercise is a fantastic supplement to any lifestyle practice because it protects against sickness and makes you feel your best. You may be concerned about how exercise will alter your appetite for various reasons. If you want to reduce weight, you might be concerned that increasing workouts will make you hungry. The good news is that the evidence suggests otherwise.
If you want to maintain or raise your body weight, possibly to create lean muscle mass, you may need to add calories to your diet actively. Whatever your aim, fuel your performance with nutrient-dense foods and prioritize protein intake. If you are still deciding, a sports nutritionist or dietician can assist you in developing a healthy eating plan that works for you.