Too Much Exercise Makes You Hungry
April 24, 2010 
9 Comments
I’ve been telling my clients for years not to control their weight with too much exercise. Most people think they have to exercise for numerous hours per week to burn the extra calories and lose weight. The popular belief for weight loss is the longer and harder the better. But my 25 years of experience has shown me a contrarian view to weight loss. Seventy-five percent of how low your body weight will be has to due with your diet. The remaining 25% is related to exercise and genetics.
The New York Times Magazine had an article last week called Weighing the Evidence on Exercise. Eric Ravussin, a professor at Pennington Biomedical Research Center who‘s been studying weight loss for years, said “In general, exercise by itself is pretty useless for weight loss”. What he meant by his statement is that long hard exercise sessions increases your appetite to a point where you wind up consuming more calories then you burn up by exercising. I have seen this happen to my clients for years. They want to lose weight so they start running hard for an hour, five to six days per week. They become so hungry that they start eating way more calories than they burned up running. The end result is no weight loss or weight gain and an overuse exercise injury.
In my opinion, you reach a point of diminishing returns very quickly with exercise. Exercising too much, just to burn extra calories, will ultimately make you ravenously hungry resulting in overeating. In addition, too much exercise can lead to injury, burnout and insomnia, and a host of other ailments. Learn how to control your weight with your diet. You should exercise for maximum results in a minimal amount of time.
How to Exercise Without Getting Hungry
You can strengthen your cardiovascular system for maximum results with short interval work-outs in less than 20 minutes, once or twice per week. For muscular strength and endurance, most people need only two full-body basic strength training routines lasting no longer than 45 minutes, twice per week. Round your weekly exercise program off by walking, hiking or biking easy for longer periods of time without putting any stress on your body.
The Fitness Contrarian way to building a healthy body and lose weight without getting hungry is short hard aerobics, moderately hard full body strength training work outs, and long and easy daily activities like walking with a perfect diet.
Let me know if exercise makes you hungry.
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Best – Mike Cola
Demystifying Fitness, Health & Nutrition
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Makes sense to me! Thanks for making it clear and easy to follow……. and keep the good, contrarian, information coming!
Mike,
Exercise makes me ravenous! But I still continued to listen to conventional wisdom on losing weight – exercise hard and you will get a great body. It’s just not true. I’m one of those women who can run a half marathon and gain weight! I am so happy I found your blog because it reflects my real life experience. Thank you for this post!
Hi Andrenna,
Thanks for visiting my blog.
Too much exercise makes me hungry too. You really have to control your weight with your diet and exercise to be healthy.
Best – Mike
I had the same problem. I have been unemployed for so long and can’t seem to get a job so I figured I would join the gym for a month to month type thing. It has to be better than sitting around eating and watching tv all day! Well its been only 2 days and I thought I was doing amazing- burned 500 cals yesterday and then 600 today. I used some weight machines to work the flab around my triceps. Well I ended up eating WAY more calories than I usually do. Before this exercise kick I would eat about 1200 calories a day to lose weight (my BMI calculations indicated I could lose a pound or 2 a week if I cut down to 1300/1200 calories a day. I am 23, female, weigh about 153, 5’4)
Well yesterday I had eaten more than the usual 1200. But today was a record. Seriously— ate like 1800 calories! So sure, I burned off 600. I’m thinking I am over doing it. So here’s the problem. I think there are a few problems. First, I did some reading tonight that discussed this happening to many people. The INSATIABLE hunger. Also, I could barely sleep last night. I am glad to have all this new found energy because I was lacking energy before the gym, but now I am bursting with energy where I probably won’t sleep tonight either.
I also will be moving to another country in 2 months, hence, the month-to-month gym thing. I don’t want to go back to my natural lack of exercise (LOL) and end up eating the same way.
I haven’t been eating donuts or anything really fun… I am vegan and have been eating tons of veggies, soy milk, good cereal, gardein chikn strips, kale, rice, bananas, oh,…and that 10pm fat-ass PB & J on sprouted bread…which is kind of my donut with at least more protein.
Any suggestions?!
Oh yeah..
Another problem is that I really like this intense exercise thing. It makes me feel REALLY good! I MUST be releasing endorphins or something.
Hi Moriah,
You can try eating right after you workout. Make your post workout meal the biggest of the day. When you workout hard you are depleting your carb stores so fill them up right after your workout with some protein too and I think it will suppress your hunger later.
Thanks for the comment and let me know if this helps.
Best – Mike
This post sure is true. Your body burns calories for a host of other activities such as digesting food, and even when your body is healing itself. It is good to incorporate some type of water activity so that your body gets a rest from the pounding involved with exercise.
Yes, this is true. However, people that lose weight through diet alone will not be in good shape. They still will have too much body fat. That is called skinny-fat. Exercise tones and makes people in shape. Many thin people who eat a lot do not exercise and they have too much body fat, but they can hide it because of their build.