Does exercising make you overeat?
According to researchers, the answer is: only for some people, perhaps even the minority.
I don’t know. To me, these experiments have a flawed design:
Exercise may change your desire to eat, two recent studies show, by altering how certain parts of your brain respond to the sight of food…To find out, the researchers had the volunteers either vigorously ride computerized stationary bicycles or sit quietly for an hour before settling onto the M.R.I. tables. Each volunteer then swapped activities for their second session.
Immediately afterward, they watched a series of photos flash onto computer screens. Some depicted low-fat fruits and vegetables or nourishing grains, while others showcased glistening cheeseburgers, ice cream sundaes and cookies. A few photos that weren’t of food were interspersed into the array.
In the volunteers who’d been sitting for an hour, the food-reward system lit up, especially when they sighted high-fat, sugary items.
But if they had worked out for an hour first, those same people displayed much less interest in food, according to their brain scans. Their insula and other portions of the food-reward system remained relatively quiet, even in the face of sundaes.
“Responsiveness to food cues was significantly reduced after exercise,” says Todd A.
What’s the flaw that I think I see? They looked at the photos immediately afterward. It’s been my experience that exercise may reduce appetite very temporarily, but that hunger kicks in an hour or two later with a vengeance, after a person has showered and rested.
Long, long ago I was a member of a small dance company for a short while. We were preparing for a performance by not only taking our usual one and a half hour daily dance class, but also rehearsing for four or five hours every day as well.
It was a grueling regimen and I thought that well, it might be tiring but at least I’d lose weight. Not that I was fat; back when I was dancing I was always on a strict diet and I was very slender, but I was not thin by dance standards (as long as you’re alive, you can almost never be too thin by dance standards) and I was always looking to lose more.
But I didn’t. I noticed that I was ravenous, although not while I was dancing or immediately thereafter. But when I got home, my body was giving me the message to eat more to make up for the increase in calorie expenditure. It was a bitter disappointment when my weight stayed exactly the same, but I think my body was doing pretty much what it was supposed to do.
And then, when my husband was in his late twenties, he was probably the only person in history to go on a month-long bike trip—through the mountains and the deserts of California and probably using up an extra 5,000 calories a day—who ended up gaining some pounds for his troubles. Not that he was heavy to begin with, either, but he said he was ravenous and ate a lot of that trail mix type stuff, which can pack quite a wollop. And it wasn’t just muscle gain, either.
And you?
Your comment about your husband was funny, because I had a similar experience. During my mid-twenties I backpacked the Pacific Crest Trail from Lake Tahoe to the summit of Mt. Whitney (400+ miles) for two months, a 50-60 lb pack the whole way, also gaining a little weight from a diet of mostly “trail mix type stuff.” Those nuts are powerful….
Exercise makes me so hungry I just order the Pizza on a halfhour delivery schedule and then lie down until it arrives so I’ll have the energy to eat it.
While exercising I picture the glycogen stores in my body running down like gas in a tank. It is a good idea to eat within forty minutes of strenuous exercise to replenish those glycogen stores. (My routine is to drink a whey protein shake, with a teaspoon of macadamia oil, and a helping of salad or berries.) When you do this, it allows those glycogen stores to be refilled and helps repair the damage to the muscles. That helps blunt the appetite. If you wait longer than that, the body notices the glycogen deficit and appetite kicks in much more strongly.
My biggest appetite problem comes on hard workout days at about 5pm. We normally eat around six, but my body needs something earlier. Celery, sauerkraut, a small piece of cheese, or a few almonds/macadamia nut are how I bridge the gap.
Yes, I’m a bit of a crank when it comes to watching my diet.
Isn’t exercise a waste of energy? And aren’t we all supposed to save energy?
I am overweight. If I want to gain weight, I work out. Although I do gain muscle weight, like you, I add to my consumption and also add fat weight. If I want to lose a few pounds, say 20, I eat more and smaller meals. Eating five to six times a day will net me a good weight loss (doesn’t matter what I eat as long as it is in the 3-6 ounce total range per meal). I have never figured out how to do both (or either alone, actually) for very long, if heart problems gimp me pretty heavily on all fronts as the reason. Oh, but I weigh in at 270, so 20 pounds… isn’t what it may have seemed (perspective).
No question. If I manage to do a moderate workout, late in the afternoon, I can avoid the serious munchies or mitigate them by not eating much (or anything) all morning (I joke with my wife that my default mode is starvation). However, an early morning workout that crushes my body starts a day-long feeding frenzy that probably cancels any good done by said grueling workout. It’s especially hard when I’m stuck at school all day, with the high availability of comparatively cheap snack and fast food!
for me diet varies depending on activity over an average… so i tend to float near the same weight unless conditions are drastically different like when i was in Indonesia.
when i would walk 30 miles on a weekend i would eat a lot more. i haven’t done that since i got married, and so now i eat very little compared to that.
i am 6’3″ and currently around 200-220
my highest weight at that height was 255
my lowest weight 130
I am 48 later this year, and am on no medications. I am rarely sick. though now having problems sleeping and lots of stress from work. not good, but not much i can do about it.
no particular regimen.. my camera stuff is heavy, i carry it, and walk long distances when i can. its the exercise that you can generally do for a lifetime. low impact, and taking pictures and such is a lot better than being on a treadmill walking towards yourself but never arriving, for a half hour a day at several hundred a month.
not as safe “but who wants to live forever?” – Sergeant Major Daniel Joseph “Dan” Daly (twice received medal of honor!) or if you prefer music – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L8-FTvSVxs
When the forces that be dont hold me down, i spend a lot of my time living… doing lots of things in which ONE would be enough for most people…
Perpetual Motion cause “Rust never sleeps”!!!
or if you like Broadway theater..
No Time At All – Pippin – Martha Raye
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIfAGN6o3Jg
i warn..
“To the Virgins, to make much of Time!!!” 🙂
GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying….
>>> It is a good idea to eat within forty minutes of strenuous exercise to replenish those glycogen stores. (My routine is to drink a whey protein shake, with a teaspoon of macadamia oil, and a helping of salad or berries.)
Eww. I’ll stick with the cheeseburger and fries, thanks.
(8^D
All kidding aside, I think JJ is basically correct, the trick is to replenish your body’s blood sugars without overindulging.
Men have a distinct advantage over women when it comes to weight control.
Men can readily add muscle, while women have to really work at it
The average female, according to one statistic I’ve encountered, never gains any more muscle mass than she had when she was 14, while men gain mass well into their 20s — and this is without even trying. Men on the other hand, can easily add still more mass, while women usually have a serious upper bound well below that of men. There’s a reason the Corey Eversons of the world are unusual.
This is particularly relevant to weight control. Every pound of muscle burns around 500 calories a week doing nothing. So if you add 15 pounds of muscle (not all that tough, for guys, fairly tough for women), that’s an additional 500×15, or 7500 additional calories a week you can eat and not gain another pound. That’s like 3-5 serious MEALS, or one hell of a mass of random snacks. And it doesn’t take that much work for a guy to maintain that once he’s put it on, maybe 30-45 mins a week, an hour tops.
Or you can directly burn it off aerobically, which takes more than 15-odd minutes each time, just to kick start your body into aerobic, “fat-burning” mode. And if you take a couple weeks off, due to vacation time or illness, you lose a LOT of your built-up propensity to do aerobic exercise (it’s very expensive, physically, to maintain, and humans don’t do it if there is no demand. You can go from endless treadmill shape, taking like 6-8 months to get into, to barely able to run for 15 mins nonstop in only 2 months)
So guys have both options, whereas women really only have the latter. It’s one of the few arenas in modern life where guys have it great compared to women.
All in all, the point of exercise is to NOT increase your intake substantially — and either way, you have to resist your cravings, it’s just that one — exercise — allows you to eat more as long as it’s not a LOT more, while you lose weight.
I’ve also seen arguments that what really happens is your body has its own idea of what your “ideal fat-weight” should be, and this is controlled by a number of factors. Age is clearly one factor. Lifestyle in general is another. How much you eat as a whole can shift it upwards (hence grossly obese people, who have usually made the mental flaw of either punishing themselves or rewarding themselves with food), and exercise can trend it downwards (since “lean” is the usual goal, not actual absolute pounds). If you don’t make an effort to shift it, and continue working to keep it shifted, it will gravitate to that level.
Our current society tends to obsess over fat-weight, which is a reversal of the natural process. Since we’re designed to store food for lean times (they happen so regularly until recently) it’s a lot easier to put the pounds on than to take them off. There are some health benefits to having low fat, but the cost in terms of time-to-maintain might be a net loss. After all — suppose you add a year to your life by being lean, but spend two years actual, real time at the gym? Is that a gain or a loss or not? Did you enjoy being at the gym? Did you enjoy the feeling you had outside of the gym that it gave you? Our society arrogantly pre-supposes the answers are “yes”, when, in fact, they often are not. Did you miss the potato chips, the ice cream, and the Coca Colas? I bet you did.
I ran a marathon a few years ago to get rid of some middle age spread. I lost 3 pounds in all that training. 3!!
Oh brother.
What’s with the preoccupation with pounds? It’s the mirror that counts.
My wife goes to the gym and always complains that she can barely lose any pounds. True, but she’s fitter, stronger, and looks better. Works the same with me.