I started weight training about a couple of months ago. Fantastic results so far, etc. etc. It’s certainly not intensive (as in, I’m not at the gym every day, working different muscle groups), but it’s definitely not half-assed.
I’ve noticed a change in my appetite that I can’t pin on anything else, such as any of the meds I take, since those haven’t changed since I started working out. My co-worker/trainer/Adam-Sandler-look-and-sound-alike, who knows a lot about training & nutrition, can’t answer this one.
My appetite seems to have decreased, at least between meals. I have no snacking urges, even in the afternoon, when they used to hit me around 3 PM and I’d succumb to a chocolate bar or Rice Krispie® squares.
Between meals, I’m not particularly hungry, and even when I do start feeling a bit hungry, it never boils over into starving. When I sit down to eat, though, I suddenly have an appetite, I eat almost everything I’ve put in front of me, then I’m done. After that, I’m not hungry again until my next meal.
My worst times for irresistible urges to snack (almost always on crap) were, as I mentioned, around 3 PM (about two hours after lunch), and then before bed, about three hours after dinner. Now, it doesn’t even enter my mind. The most I’ll now have before bed is some sweet chai tea made with low-fat milk, and that’s enough until morning.
Is this normal? I’ve heard that increased muscle mass makes the body more efficient at burning calories (and various other theories), but that would lead me to believe I’d be hungry more often, or at least hungrier when it came to mealtime.
I know that aerobic exercise changes the metabolism, but I haven’t been doing any because of a very badly sprained ankle and hairline-fractured foot.*
So is this normal, or at least possible? It’s great, because I’m losing the last of the 40 lbs. of fat I put on after I quit drinking, without having to do cardio. I just want to know if this is something common, or if it’s not, and I have a wacky metabolism.
- Doctor said, do cardio anyway. Just don’t do anything that involves your foot. Like swimming. Right. Other than walking - slower than usual - during the day, I’m not doing anything that’s going to use the foot in any capacity. It’s already taking longer than it should to heal.