Hungry after workouts

chedaze

The past few months I’ve been trying to get it together. I’ve been doing about 700-900 calories of exercise (yoga, cardio, HIIT). I feel like I’m so hungry after workouts or before bed.
Any tips? Trying to loose weight, so I’d like to maintain the calorie deficit

Strudders67

The calories that MFP gave you when you went through the set-up process is the number of NET calories you should be eating per day. So, if you're exercising you should be logging that exercise and eating those calories on top of what you were initially given. Are you doing that? If not, you're under eating quite significantly, are not fueling your workout and it's not surprising that you're hungry.

700-900 seems a lot for exercise, but you should still be eating a good percentage of your exercise calories.

Mithridites

Exercise raises my apetite too. It’s normal but annoying. I often find good ideas in the volume eaters thread.

spiriteagle99

Are you eating back your exercise calories? You should be eating back at least a large portion of them. I eat back 100% because that works for me. Many start with 50% and adjust if they need to. Not all exercises are easy to log correctly. Walking and running yes, anything that is based on effort is harder to determine. i.e. moderate intensity calisthetics, or yoga or pilates, the effort may be very different for different people.

If you know that you get hungry a couple of hours after a hard workout, then eat something right afterwards. Chocolate milk or a sandwich combine protein and carbs for healing muscles and energy replenishment. You amy also feel really hungry because you are dehydrated. Make sure you are drinking enough to replace lost sweat and electrolytes.

ClimbingWolf

at what times do you normally eat the biggest proportions of calories? Like, before or after your workouts? and for cravings before going to bed you could try eating quark, if not doing that already. You could play around with the timings of your meals during the day, see if that helps.

NovusDies

In addition to the above questions I will add:

Are you trying to do burn that much while fasted? That makes me ravenous afterwards.

Onedaywriter

I’m the same. Some people don’t want to eat after workouts but I’m the opposite- I’m starving. I rearranged my day so I workout right before dinner. On weekends I workout in the morning and have some protein (eggs or yogurt etc) immediately afterwards. Seems to be working.

Jazznit

This is your bodies natural response to cardio heavy workouts. It wants to replace the calories it lost. There are a few solutions I have found that work. If I do cardio I do it in the morning & eat a high protein breakfast (400-500 cals).Make sure your daily calorie intake is reasonable and a range. My range is 1500-1700. My second bit of advice is to switch to more Strength training (weight lifting). You won’t get a specific 500 calorie burn. But lifting won’t make you hungry like this. Honestly, it has completely changed how I see weight loss. Your scale loss will be slower but you will have more visible weight loss (inches). I’ve stuck with weights for a while now and if you stay the course it’s mind blowing. No you don’t need to ride a bike for an hour at soul cycle. Now that I have been doing it a while I’m done in 30 minutes, honestly. Maybe two days a week I will do cardio but it’s activity based with people and that is so much more enjoyable! I workout 4-5 days a week. Usually in the mornings.
-Warm up stretches and 10 minutes on the rower
-Hiit workout (usually these takes anywhere from 5-20 min depends on the workout)
Example:
6 rounds of
10 body rows
20 squats with 25 lb weight
15 sit ups
-weight lifting 10-20minutes rotating daily
core, arms, legs

I have maintained a 53 lbs weight loss for four years. I just started weight training this year and I wish I would have found this workout style earlier. It’s been a learning curve. But take it slow and try taking one change on at a time.

chedaze

Okay, thank you all. These are good things to consider. I am replacing most of the calories I loose from exercise. The reason I’m doing such calorie depleting workout is because I need to do cardio for my sanity; I’m quarantined in Lagos, Nigeria, where we moved a year ago, so I can’t just go out freely to get exercise/walking in casually. I have an elliptical at my house so I use it daily. But I also need yoga to be fit, and I need a little HIIT to get the weight off. I think I do need more weights in my life, but I have limited access to them. Thanks for the support!

AnnPT77

Jazznit wrote: »

This is your bodies natural response to cardio heavy workouts. It wants to replace the calories it lost. There are a few solutions I have found that work. If I do cardio I do it in the morning & eat a high protein breakfast (400-500 cals).Make sure your daily calorie intake is reasonable and a range. My range is 1500-1700. My second bit of advice is to switch to more Strength training (weight lifting). You won’t get a specific 500 calorie burn. But lifting won’t make you hungry like this. Honestly, it has completely changed how I see weight loss. Your scale loss will be slower but you will have more visible weight loss (inches). I’ve stuck with weights for a while now and if you stay the course it’s mind blowing. No you don’t need to ride a bike for an hour at soul cycle. Now that I have been doing it a while I’m done in 30 minutes, honestly. Maybe two days a week I will do cardio but it’s activity based with people and that is so much more enjoyable! I workout 4-5 days a week. Usually in the mornings.
-Warm up stretches and 10 minutes on the rower
-Hiit workout (usually these takes anywhere from 5-20 min depends on the workout)
Example:
6 rounds of
10 body rows
20 squats with 25 lb weight
15 sit ups
-weight lifting 10-20minutes rotating daily
core, arms, legs

I have maintained a 53 lbs weight loss for four years. I just started weight training this year and I wish I would have found this workout style earlier. It’s been a learning curve. But take it slow and try taking one change on at a time.

To the bolded: Boy, is that ever not universally true!

Strength training makes me hungry. (Minor dietary changes make that manageable.) Cardio doesn't have that same effect, for a similar (and longer) duration or calorie expenditure. (I'm a rower, on water and machine; and go to spin classes when not under "stay at home" strictures. With on-water rowing, I can't imagine wanting to do it for only 30 minutes!).

What makes people hungry tends to be very individual. Often, rearranging timing of eating will help (sometimes timing of particular macros, especially carbohydrates or protein).

Strudders67

Not perfect, but an idea for weights is to fill bottles with water and use those. If that's too easy, fill a couple of bottles and put them in a bag.