Ever felt hungry after a good workout session? Found out why and what you can do about it.
The question "why do I feel hungry whenever I burn calories?' is one of the questions I get asked a lot. This question is mostly not specific enough as you can burn calories in many ways and different factors may cause you to be hungry depending on the method you employed in burning calories.
However, I'll approach this question by trying to address the reasons why one may feel hungry when burning calories.
“...different factors may cause you to be hungry depending on the method you employed in burning calories.”
There are different types of exercises; endurance or aerobic exercises popularly referred to as cardio, strength training exercises (body weight such as Pilates, resistance bands, and weight lifting), balance exercises and flexibility exercises such as yoga.
Engaging in Aerobic exercises aka cardiovascular exercises, cardio for short is one reason why you feel hungry after a good burn. This is one of the cons of aerobic exercises. If you were doing anaerobic i.e. weight training, you may not experience this. You should weigh the pros and cons of aerobic and anaerobic exercises.
Let’s now see exactly why you feel hungry after exercising.
1. It's Naturally triggered by the Ghrelin Hormone
Essentially, your body needs fuel for your workouts. It takes this fuel from whatever is in your Glycogen store. Glycogen is where the body stores energy from carbohydrates (carbs) and supplies to the body for use as fuel. When this store is completely depleted, and not immediately replenished, your body will begin drawing fuel from blood sugar. Your level of hunger is not because you burned so much calories. There’s a hormone in the body responsible for stimulating hunger. This hormone is called ghrelin. Whenever your body’s blood sugar levels are low, the energy in your body cells becomes completely depleted and the ghrelin hormone is activated, telling your brain to pressure you into finding something to eat. You may want to avoid low blood sugar levels as it poses some potential health risks.
What you should really pay mind to, is eating something before a workout to mitigate the hunger cravings you get after an exercise.
2. Your Leptin Levels
Leptin levels is another factor that may contribute to hunger after a workout. Leptin regulates hunger like a thermostat. High levels of leptin suppresses your appetite thereby making you eat less while low levels of leptin triggers your Vagus nerve making you hungrier. When leptin levels are normal, your body is more efficient is using energy and you won’t feel hungry until necessary. The way to maintain a normal leptin level is to exercise regularly, eat balanced meals frequently and completely avoid skipping meals or starvation. Otherwise, leptin levels get really low and may make you begin craving food even when your body doesn’t need it. It is quite possible to have high levels of leptin and still be experiencing high levels of hunger making you eat more than you should. This condition is called – Leptin Resistance, it happens when your brain is no longer listening to and correctly interpreting these leptin messages, and it is most commonly found among Obese individuals.
Ironically, according to research, fatter individuals have higher leptin levels because apparently, leptin is produced by fat cells.
Therefore, if you’re worried that you have low leptin levels, taking leptin supplements or eating foods high in leptin may increase leptin levels but will have no effect on the resistance. You should really speak to a Physician for these concerns. However, I would opine that the fitter you are, the less leptin problems.
3. Type of Exercise you just completed
Another reason you are experiencing hunger after your workout may be owing to the type of aerobic exercise you do. You may feel more hungry after endurance exercises such as Low Intensity Steady State workout aka LISS as against doing High Intensity Interval Training aka HIIT.
This is majorly because LISS takes up more time although one may argue that during HIIT, the body is working harder and spending more energy, it doesn’t seem to have the same hunger after-effect like LISS. This may be due to the recovery interval, giving the body time to convert fat and replenish energy for the next round.
Both exercises serve different purposes and serves different goals.
Recovery is a vital factor to consider in post workout hunger. During your workout, your body sends blood from organs that may not be currently functioning at optimum levels to your muscles where there is currently high activity. After your workout, during recovery, the blood flows back to these organs as your body settles down and these organs may resume their activities and begin sending signals, one of which is hunger. In this case, you may experience – Late Hunger. This occurs between 45 to 60 minutes after your workout, when we can assume that the body is normalized.
In Closing
You should know that sometimes you may just be thirsty. Before you give in to your hunger signals, drink some water. Staying hydrated all day may help combat unnecessary hunger signals. Water intake cannot be overemphasized. It has many health benefits and also truly essential to your calorie burn.
Senior Exercise Physiologist; Heather Milton M.S. have also pointed out that Hunger may sometimes be psychological.
Many times you eat even when you’re not hungry, but because you think or assume that you are. I hope this article was helpful :) Don't forget to share!