why with less cardio i have an urge to eat more

trulyhealy

this is just a thought on my mind but when i first starting this weight loss journey i could eat 1,200 - 1,300 with 2 and a half hours of cardio (excessive i know but i’ve learnt it’s not required)

but now i’ve reduced my cardio and focus on strength training and i really struggle to eat 1,300 it’s now on average 1,500 which i’m now happy with.

surly with less cardio now, i shouldn’t have an urge to eat as much as i do now? or does lifting weights require more calories so the body craves more calories? idk how to describe

PAV8888

A lot of actions appear to be successful in the short term. A lot of actions have side effects too.

**I** think of **me** as a spring. If I push down real hard and real sharp, I better have an extended "watch for that rebound till things start to feel normal (again)" time period in mind

The weight regain when trying to maintain danger period seems, for most of us, to be longer (or at best as long) as the time period it takes to lose the weight. A prime contributor to the regain is increased appetite.

The longer you maintain the loss... the more likely you are to be able to continue to do so both behaviorally and hormonally.

tinkerbellang83

I tend to feel hungrier when lifting than when doing more cardio. No idea why so probably that's not much use to you. I presume some of it is down to distraction, my cardio is usually rowing, hiking or jogging both involve heading outside so I'm away from the fridge, often away from my thoughts and then there's all those lovely endorphins that help bat the blues away - I'm an emotional/stress binge eater.

Lietchi

Lifting weights doesn't burn a lot of calories, but that doesn't mean it can't make you hungry.
Some people get hungry after cardio, some after strength training. And even for cardio, it might depend on the type and intensity of the exercise.
It's highly individual 🙂

dragon_girl26

I remember back when I was attempting a heavy lifting routine for awhile...my hunger was out of control. I couldn't get home fast enough to eat dinner most nights. Cardio doesn't have that effect for me for some reason.

rosebarnalice

I've wondered that myself. On the days I swim, I actually tend to eat less than on the days that I don't.

kshama2001

Sounds like your hunger cues were abnormally depressed in the beginning and now are more normal.

nytrifisoul

I tend to drink more water when doing cardio and it tends to curb my hunger. Not sure if its related to drinking more water or not.

age_is_just_a_number

When you do more resistance training, your body burns fewer calories during the exercise, but more calories throughout the day after the exercise.

ninerbuff

Exercise curbs hunger. Less exercise could mean less curbing of hunger.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
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Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

ninerbuff

tgillies003 wrote: »

When you do more resistance training, your body burns fewer calories during the exercise, but more calories throughout the day after the exercise.

Not really. The whole EPOC suggestion doesn't hold up well under scientific testing. A regular member here (though I haven't seen him lately) wrote a thread on it (Azdak I can't locate it).
Just for thought here. If you burned 350 calories of hard work, the rest of the day you'll burn 10% of that extra. So an extra 35 calories. An apple has more calories than that.


A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

sijomial

Different exercise modes provoke different hunger reactions and that often isn't in relation to calories burned.
e.g. burning 500cals in an hour on the bike at moderate steady state creates far less hunger than the same 500cals burned if I did interval training with intense peak efforts for an hour on the bike.

These are my responses but might not be the same as your reactions to different exercises:
Strength training, more hunger despite a low burn.
Gentle intensity cardio, no hunger response at all.
Moderate cardio intensity roughly the same hunger to calories except very long duration when it's less hunger than the very big calorie burns.
Intense cardio or intense interval training, more hunger than the calorie burn.

littlegreenparrot1

I have a similar experience to you, I struggle to fuel my long runs properly because I don't feel hungry at all while I'm doing it.

I have to make myself eat a little bit regularly because I know it will come back and bite me a few hours in if I don't.

It's also good to remember it is often one's brain rather than body that thinks it needs to eat. So I'm often not feeling hungry when I've run 15 miles on the trail in the cold, but sat in the Kitchen trying to work and getting fed up - that apparently needs much more fuel 😆

lgfrie

I'm going to come at this from a different angle and suggest it's possible the change in your appetite has nothing to do with the shift from cardio to resistance training.

When I started my diet journey in 5/19 I was absolutely amazed at how little appetite I had. 330 pounds, eating and binging like a starving maniac for years and years, I started dieting and all of a sudden I was not hungry at all. My calorie target was 1600 and I was completely sated and full on those 1600, which were probably half to a third of what I had eaten every day for the years leading up to Diet Day 1. I simply couldn't believe how easy it was to restrict my calories and lose weight, which melted off me pretty much daily without a break for three months.

Then one day around 3-4 months later, I suddenly felt hungry. Really hungry, not just physically, but in some other way too - just really craving food. I binged a little, regrouped, got back on my diet, and plowed forward, but here's the thing, that increased appetite has never gone away. All this time later, some days I do quite well on the 1850 cals I get now, some days I am extremely hungry. My appetite has never returned to the "non-existent" state it was in for the first 3 months of my project.

I've often pondered why that could be. Possible reasons I've come up with are: initial enthusiasm of getting started on a diet, extra adrenaline from starting a workout program which might curb appetite, or shock to the system of restricting calories. Whatever. The point was, it was all temporary. Eventually the body wants to be fed and here's the thing, the human body does not like being in a calorie deficit. By very definition, a calorie deficit is less food than the body wants, and so it has to reach for its fat stores - that brilliant evolutionary design to keep you alive in times of famine - and burn them off to keep you moving and alive. It doesn't like doing that, and rebels with hunger signals.

An interesting experiment for you to run would be to go do cardio for a week and see if your appetite disappears. I'm betting it won't. I think you're just done with the diet honeymoon and are on to the next phase, which is harder.

I urge you to feed your body enough calories that it doesn't protest so much. 1200-1300 is not a lot of calories. It is not a surprise that you feel hungry on that allotment. The single best thing you can do when you feel hungry is eat some food.