Exercise and appetite

In the glucose flattening thread a side discussion came up here regarding exercise and its impact on burning calories during the rest of the day.

And certainly different sorts of exercise impact that in many different ways (energy used for muscle repair, increased lean body mass leading to a higher resting energy metabolism, changes one way or the other in “non exercise activity thermogenesis” aka NEAT, movement during the day including just fidgeting …)

Altogether that could add up to a few hundred calories in each day. Probably less than in a bran muffin …

Exercise also impacts intake. Some people ending up compensating exactly even, some overcompensating, some having less appetite with regular exercise, some just more mindful of what they eat. Not sure how often which though.

Hence this poll!

  • I eat lots more
  • I eat a bit more
  • I eat a bit less
  • I eat lots less
  • I am more mindful of what I eat
  • dunno
  • other (see post)
0 voters

I have no explanation for this but if I walk, hike, cycle, play pickle ball (mostly lower body activities) before breakfast I don’t feel a need to eat until well after noon. If I swim or surf (mostly paddling), I am famished.

I’ve heard that the cold water increases your appetite because it activates the cold weather response in your body that makes it want to store calories for the winter.

When I exercise regularly, I tend to have naturally better eating habits. Healthier options typically sound better to me and I don’t have to make a conscious choice to pick them. I don’t get urges for sweets and treats as much. When I eat them, I can be satisfied with a smaller amount. When I don’t work out, that’s when I start to want stuff like fried chicken, pizza, etc.

I’m not very hungry at all after exercise. It seems to suppress my appetite temporarily. But that doesn’t mean I don’t make up for it later in the day. I’ve never really paid close attention to this. I will have to observe for a more complete answer.

That makes sense. For some reason I suspected it was down to upper/lower body exercise.

During the times when I was exercising regularly, I was more mindful of what I ate, but during that time, I was also consciously trying to lose weight and then maintain that. I was successful, but as soon as I stopped keeping a detailed record of what I was eating, the weight started creeping back on. For me, I suspect that whatever eating disorder I have (and I’ve come to realize that scrupulous calorie counting along with exercise and weight tracking count as some kind of disorder) overrides any physical factor in appetite.

I don’t know if that was the reason, but it used to happen to me after swimming (in a pool) when I was a child. I noticed I was much hungrier than I was after other kinds of exercise.

As an adult, I start to crave sweets (cakes, pies, pastries, not candies or chocolates) after a few days into a routine of daily exercise (running, cycling). Doesn’t happen when I’m inactive.

The OP doesn’t actually have a QUESTION. There are answers, but what are you asking?

I assumed it was “After I exercise, what are my eating habits?”

Anyway, I try and exercise at night, within an hour or less of bedtime, so that I go to bed before the extra hunger kicks in, then have a normal breakfast.

That’s my experience as well.

After moderate exercise I have a reduced appetite vs on my couch potato days. After vigorous hard exercise I want to eat a store full of food. I can often resist that urge, but it’s work.

Yes. If unclear: what impact does exercise have on your appetite?

I’m addition to what has already been suggested there are many other explanations. High intensity exercise tends to impact differently and, overlapping with that, strength training with its muscle damage does as well. Your body may experience those activities differently in those regards.

Cardio exercise reduces my appetite in the short term (up to several hours after exercising) and increases it longer-term (several hours to several days). I have found that, in the long term, for every extra 100 kilocalories I burn through exercise, I generate roughly 80 kilocalories of extra hunger. That is, if I burn, say, 500 calories by hiking I would need to eat 400 extra calories over the next few days in order for my appetite to be the same as if I hadn’t exercised. The picture is less clear for resistance training. It seems to generate somewhat less hunger than cardio, relative to calories burned.

That may make exercise, or at least cardio, seem almost pointless. However, I continue to do cardio because it has other benefits besides losing weight and burning calories. For one thing, it vastly improves my mood and my overall sense of well-being.

I eat better (and more) when I work out because I don’t really know how to eat otherwise.

When I’m not working out, I eat horribly - I usually skip breakfast, eat fast food for lunch, and snack on junk food for dinner, with a liberal supply of soda to drink. It’s absolutely a recipe for a whole host of disasters.

And it certainly doesn’t give me the energy I’d need to exercise. So, when I get into an exercise routine, I have to eat well (lots of fruits and vegetables, whole Foods, and quality protein). Eating well, of course, also contributes to success with exercise: my muscles feel fuller, and are more responsive, when I am properly fed.

Basically, healthy eating leads me to exercise, not the other way around.

Going with your numbers, and fully embracing the many benefits of exercise to health both physical and mental, I think you possibly shortchange your estimate on calories out. You are counting the calories you calculate you burn during exercise (presumptively above what would have been burned during that time if not exercising), but some of the impact of exercise is at times not exercising. That includes the immediate 24 recovery impact, aka excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), increased resting energy expenditure largely a result of increased fat free mass, and possibly increased non exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) as often fitter people are more likely to be otherwise more active (although not always). It’s still not going to be huge number but still bigger.

As I read responses I’m seeing some of what I read in the expert reviews: that the impact on hunger and the impact on appetite are overlapping but not the same thing. Hunger, they say, is the clear physiologic drive. Appetite is that drive filtered through our minds interpretations including our emotions and psychological processing. That can go either way. Someone feeling that now they’ve earned a large Frappuccino (they have not), to the being more mindful about eating that we see as a leading response to date here.

I do several different types of exercise. They have different effects on my appetite, but are not always consistent even for the same type of exercise.

I eat what I need to with regards to exercise, regardless of my appetite.

Care to elaborate?

How do you determine and implement what you believe “you need to with regards to exercise”?

Story time.

At age 27 I weighed 140 lbs., at 5’11". After a long series of comments by various people about my weight, of the loud “How can you be so thin?!?!” ilk, I decided to shut their mouths, and started strength training.

I did pushups, pullups, squats etc., and gained strength measurably. But I didn’t look any different. The ugly truth about strength training sunk in: eating is one half of the equation, and not the easier half.

At first I had to force myself to eat often enough, and with enough complete protein at every meal, but I did. I went from "eat one huge meal per day, usually in the late evening " to “eat every three hours, no matter what”. Voilá, I started to gain muscle mass, not just strength. With it, I could improve / increase my training effort, in a positive feedback loop.

People who hadn’t seen me for a couple of years were stunned silent at my transformation, including those assholes who made my lack of weight a public affront.

Men I had never met radiated silent approval at my physique, women started to throw themselves at me. I even got several jobs in part because of how I looked, and what people thought it told about me. I could be the poster boy for a Charles Atlas letter course, if I only did Dynamic Tension exercises!

Things I need to do with regards to exercise (that I didn’t use to do):

I never skip breakfast, making it the biggest meal of my day.

I always train two hours after eating a solid meal, when food has left my stomach but my blood sugar hasn’t yet dropped, and I can perform at my best.

I always drink a post-workout drink immediately after training, then a big, up to cheaty meal within two hours of that, to stop the catabolic post-workout state and to reload my starved energy + repair systems (to dumb it down).

I never skip a late night meal of slow complete proteins + berries, to have building blocks available in my body for the nighttime repair & overcompensation phase (again to dumb it down).

This approach saw me go from 140 lbs. to 210 lbs., with most of the gains from increased muscle mass. In the process I learned that one can adapt to almost any eating pattern, and also start to enjoy it. But to this day I sometimes eat because I need to, not because I want to. Well worth it.

With very vigorous exercise (backcountry skiing, hard enduro dirt biking) I almost lose my appetite completely, which is obviously less than ideal. I can also lose the ability to process water for a bit, which I think is common with dehydration. I have to force myself to eat during the activity which isn’t much fun. I also get the “too tired to sleep effect.” All of this is pretty common among my friends who do activities where you are regularly going anaerobic. It’s not uncommon in both sports to see pulse rates in the 160s, when my resting pace at age 55 is 60 BPM.