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Hunger on rest/recovery days
yoplait311
Posts: 56 Member
Anyone else get way more hungry on rest/recovery days?
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Replies
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yup. Happens all the time to me.0
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Me too. I don't eat nearly as much as many other people on my high mileage days, but then I am hungry the next day. That is part of the reason I use TDEE and spread my calories out over the course of the week.0
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I should allow myself to eat at maintenance on my rest days (which don't even happen that often) but it screws with my head. Feels like I'm losing progress.0
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Yes. I get super hungry the day after long run days. I usually try to eat at maintenance (1800-2000) on rest days; there's no use starving myself twice a week at 1500 cals when on run days I eat 2400+.0
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kristinegift wrote: »Yes. I get super hungry the day after long run days. I usually try to eat at maintenance (1800-2000) on rest days; there's no use starving myself twice a week at 1500 cals when on run days I eat 2400+.
This is why I have issues with the idea of matching each day to calories burned. Garmin said I burned over 1500 calories on my long run Saturday; I'd go nuts with a 1500 calorie difference between the lightest eating day of the week and the heaviest.
My personal solution, which probably won't work for everyone, is to have a base calorie level determined by what I need to make the scale trend sideways, then add more calories for running but much fewer than Garmin says I burn. Right now, I'm adding 100 calories per 5 miles I run on running days. That lets me eat 400 more calories on a 20 mile day than on a rest day. It's enough.
Of course, the consequence of this is that my base calorie level must be adjusted up and down in response to how much running I do. That happens, but running isn't the direct trigger. Scale trending is the trigger, with a downward trend requiring an increase in calories and an upward trend requiring a decrease in calories. Disclaimer: I'm in maintenance, and the idea is to make the scale trend sideways. I don't know how much of a downward trend it would be appropriate to target in the weight loss phase when running performance is higher priority than weight loss.0 -
I am doing something similar; I have set my calorie goal somewhere around maintenance, and I do add all the running calories (I ignore my garmin, which thinks I hardly burn anything, and just use a standard formula based on weight and distance), but I don't eat them all. That way, I will lose weight in the long term, but if I would rather just eat more and maintain, I can do that too. That way I don't feel deprived if I am hungry while training.
My disclaimer is that I only want to lose about 7lbs (and not more than 10) and I don't care how long it takes.0 -
Last year before I started marathon training, I took a six week period where I basically maintained my weight. I averaged my calorie intake during that time and also my miles per week. I found that I averaged right around 1800/calories per day with 36 miles per week of running. So I set my TDEE at 1800 and tried to eat around that. For every mile over 36 that I ran, I added 70 calories to the week. I do not obsess if I go over on some days, as long as it more or less balances out over the course of the week. It worked well to help me maintain my weight (lost a little, but nothing significant) throughout my training cycle. I have been horrible about controlling my calorie intake lately. I need to get back to work on that!0
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