Does Exercise Increase Appetite?

The answer to this question is a definite maybe. Or yes. Or no. Or sometimes.

In other words, the equation between exercise and appetite depends on a lot of different factors. These include gender, weight, and body composition of the exerciser, plus type, intensity, duration, and novelty of the exercise. If you are using exercise as a method to lose weight/fat, these are just a few of the factors that might help or hinder your attempts.

Studies show that intense exercise decreases appetite, at least at first. During fast-paced or challenging exercise--for example: sprinting up a hill or lifting heavy weight--the blood is shunted away from the digestive system toward the heart, lungs, and muscles doing the work. It may take some time, but once normal blood flow returns to the stomach, it will remember that it wants food!

Overall, increasing your level of exercise--whether that means intensity, duration, or bouts per week--is likely to increase your appetite. Yes, you are burning more calories with this increase in exercise, but it is very easy to add those calories back in. You might burn 500 calories in an hour of aerobic dance, but you can eat those calories back in less than five minutes. One slice of chocolate cake, and you will back where you started.

However, there are dietary choices you can make which can dramatically decrease appetite. What you choose to eat before and after a workout will have a great effect on how hungry you end up.

Choosing to fuel your body mainly with carbs, especially more refined carbs and sugars, will increase hunger and cravings. While you are exercising, you will be burning these carbs, but once the exercise ends, you will very likely begin to feel hungry. Maybe starving! Blood sugar levels will drop, creating intense cravings. If you respond to these cravings by consuming more sugary carbs, the cycle will repeat itself.

Choosing to consume more fats and just enough protein, along with some complex carbs, will satiate your appetite and reduce cravings. Everyone used to believe that fat made you fat. This is just not true. Healthy fats--like fish oil, avocados, olive oil, grassfed butter, coconut oil, grassfed tallow and lard--are digested more slowly and help you feel satisfied for longer after a meal.

If you would like to transform your body composition by building more muscle and burning more fat, you will need to consume enough protein to repair the muscles you are trying to build. Amino acids are the building blocks of muscle. The highest quality proteins, containing the essential amino acids your body needs, are only found in animal products. Yes, some plants contain protein, but the quality of this protein is inferior to that found in animal products. No plant proteins contain all the essential (meaning absolutely necessary!) amino acids. Foods such pastured eggs, grassfed meats, wild caught fish and game, bone broth, and grassfed dairy products all contain an abundance of high quality protein with a dose of healthy fat, including omega 3 fatty acids.

One more note on increased appetite: hunger is not bad. Hunger is not something we need to avoid at all costs. Every diet book and television commercial claims that you can lose weight WITHOUT feeling hungry. In my personal experience, this is just not true. Perhaps if you follow a ketogenic diet where you eat mostly (70% or more) fat, you no longer experience hunger. But for those of us-- including myself--who choose intermittent fasting as well as some carbs, hunger is a daily experience. Hunger has not killed me yet.

Bottom line: exercise probably increases appetite, at least at times. When this happens to you, make healthy choices about what you put in your mouth. A little extra protein and fat will help keep you satisfied in addition to helping repair and build muscle. Extra sugars will probably only be added to your waistline as stored fat.