why with less cardio i have an urge to eat more

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.

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 🙂

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.