This Study Helps Answer Why You're Not Hungry After a Workout
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According to a new study published in the journal Health Psychology, physical activity—such as cycling or strength training—can actually suppress your appetite.
Two possible reasons for this are the release of hormones after exercise that reduce hunger, and the post-exercise mood and self-esteem boost, which can improve your motivation to not overeat.
Still, it’s important to refuel after a workout even if you aren’t extremely hungry—you shouldn’t wait more than two hours to eat something.
You’ve just finished your Saturday morning 60-mile ride and can’t wait to get home, take a shower, and do some much-needed foam rolling. Huh, you think to yourself. Shouldn’t I be starving right now?
But if you find yourself with a bigger appetite on your rest days than after logging your long ride into your training journal, you’re not alone. In fact, new research investigated the idea that exercise can put a damper on your appetite and found that it even prevented against overeating.
In the study, published in the journal Health Psychology, 130 participants, who were between 18 and 70 years old, were asked to exercise for one year. (They were given a graduated fitness regimen that maxed out at 250 minutes per week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week—which is in line with the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion’s guidelines.) Each participant wore a fitness tracker on their hip to measure the amount of exercise they were getting. In addition, each participant was given a daily calorie goal based on their body mass index (BMI).
Here’s what the researchers found: When participants didn’t exercise, they were 12 percent more likely to overeat (exceed their daily calorie goal). But when participants exercised for 60 minutes, their risk of overeating was cut by more than half, to only 5 percent. And for every additional 10 minutes of exercise after the 60-minute mark, the chances the participants would overeat dropped by 1 percent.
However, light physical activity (defined in the study as “activity that burns between 1.5 and 3 times as much energy per minute as resting levels of energy”) showed the strongest effects against overeating as opposed to moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (defined in the study as “activity that burns 3 or more times as much energy as resting levels”). According to the current U.S. physical activity guidelines, light activity includes walking at a “slow or leisurely pace,” moderate activity includes brisk walking, and vigorous activity includes cycling or participating in a “strenuous” fitness class.
So why exactly does exercise suppress your appetite? According to lead study author Rebecca Crochiere, Ph.D.(c), a third-year graduate student at Drexel University’s College of Arts and Sciences, there are two possible reasons.
“Some evidence suggests that following exercise, hormones are released that reduce hunger and food intake,” she told Runner’s World. “Another potential explanation is that exercise boosts mood or self-esteem, which then improves motivation to eat well or within one’s diet.”
The hormones Crochiere is referring to are grehlin—which stimulates your appetite—and peptide YY—which suppresses your appetite. A 2008 study published in the AJP Regulatory Integrative and Comparative Physiology found that running for an hour on the treadmill caused ghrelin levels to drop and peptide YY levels to spike, leading to not feeling very hungry afterwards.
It’s worth noting that while Crochiere’s study involved participants whose BMIs were between 27 and 50 (overweight or obese) who were seeking to lose or maintain weight, the results can still help to provide some insight into your eating habits even if you’re not looking to do either of those things.
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Crochiere acknowledges that more research needs to be done on the subject, so until then, we still recommend taking in essential nutrients—such as a 3:1 ratio of carbs to protein—as soon as you can after a workout to replenish glycogen stores so your body can recover from your efforts.
“Eat as soon as you can after finishing your workout, preferably within 20 to 30 minutes, but don’t wait longer than two hours,” Runner’s World previously reported. “If you feel like you just can’t eat after, try drinking your nutrition with a protein shake.”
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