Rather than completely hijack this thread, figured I’d start another. Two questions.
Why, as addressed in the other thread, does swimming make you so incredibly hungry?
I’ve occasionally felt that “need food now, and lots of it!” thing after other exercise. One particular four-hour martial arts workshop comes to mind. I polished off two enormous bowls of plain, unadorned pasta afterwards - a whole lot, considering I weighed under 100lbs at the time. I still felt hungry, though, and the hunger would not go away until I gobbled up a metric crapload of protein (soy and cheese, in my case). What gives? I’d think that in a situation where you’ve burned through a huge amount of calories, you’d want a crapload of carbs, first, and only once your body had regained a bit of energy would you need the protein. However, I clearly have no idea what I’m talking about - anyone?
IANA nutritionist or fitness expert, but my guess is that between the whole-body exercise and the cold (even 82 degree water saps heat from your body after an hour or more of immersion) some kind of evolutionary feeding impulse is stimulated, i.e. your body things “Hey, I’m out of the rain and in a nice, warm cave…where’s the buffalo steak?” I get a somewhat similar, but less severe, effect after running hard in really cold, wet weather. OTOH, running when it is hot acts (for me) as an appetite suppressent, making me have for force myself to choke down a smoothie, much less eat something substantial.
What your body craves isn’t always what it needs (I mean, there’s nothing in Twinkies or Cheetos that is nutritionally valuable, or indeed, can properly be considered food), but consider this; after long exercise, you need protiens and high calorie density foods to replace what you’ve used and help build new structures. Carbs digest quickly but don’t offer much in the way of actual nutrients, i.e. vitamins, minerals, lipids, and proteins. Dairy products have a high fat and vitamin content. Carbs, especially simple carbs, mostly just offer calories and, depending on type, dietary fiber. Too much simple sugar actually tricks the endocrine system into thinking that you’ve consumed the natural accompanying amount of other nutrients and then wonders why there’s nothing to digest, making you more hungry (or so it is with me, anyway…one can of soda and my stomach is rumbling.)
Food isn’t just about energy; it is also all of the raw materials you need to utilize the energy as well.
After four hours of intense exercise, your blood sugar’s gonna be pretty low, and all indications are that that’s what drives hunger. Why did you need the protein? I dunno; maybe it just took that long for enough pasta to digest to bring your blood sugar levels up.
Another exercise/hunger question -
I never want food right after I exercise. In fact, most of the time, eating (or drinking anything but water) right after exercise seems distasteful to nauseating. and the feeling lasts about 45 minutes to an hour. Then, I’ll slip into the “need food” (or if it was a particularly long exercise session “need food, now!”) state.
Is that kind of time delay strange? (Strangely enough, swimming is the one exercise that doesn’t really send me running to eat an hour later).