HAVE YOU EVER felt that exercising leaves you ravenous and prone to overeating? If so, you might question its effectiveness for weight loss. However, intense workouts, not gentle exercises, can curb your appetite enough to make a significant difference on the scales. Researchers have found intense workouts can have appetite-suppressing effects, such as drugs like Semaglutide, a weight-loss injection.
Intense exercise is a powerful tool in your hands, suppressing appetite through the action of GLP-1, a hormone targeted by some obesity drugs. By raising levels of GLP-1, intense exercise shares similar appetite-suppressing mechanisms with anti-obesity drugs, albeit at a lower level. This underscores the empowering role of intense exercise in controlling your appetite and, ultimately, your weight.
It’s a common belief that people who engage in gentle exercises, such as walking, are more likely to reward themselves afterwards, negating any calories they burn. In contrast, intense exercise leads to appetite suppression. One key player here is ghrelin, a hormone that stimulates appetite and is known to be dampened by strenuous exercise. Studies have shown that animals eat more when infused with ghrelin. Therefore, suppressing it in humans leads to eating less. However, it’s important to note that these effects are relatively short-lived, with ghrelin levels returning to near normal within 30 to 60 minutes of finishing a workout.
Researchers at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada are also examining the effects of lactate, a waste product produced by muscles during intense exercise, on hunger levels. A study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology compared high-intensity interval training (HIIT) on a bike or treadmill with 20 minutes of gentle running.
Blood tests revealed that lactate levels were predictably high in the HIIT exercisers, and higher lactate levels correlated with lower ghrelin levels, suggesting a solid appetite-suppressing effect. Food diaries completed 24 hours after the lab-based workouts showed that the high-lactate HIIT group consumed up to 201 fewer calories than the moderate-paced runners, a small but potentially significant reduction if repeated several times a week.
Remember, healthy habits are crucial. Regular exercise is vital to continuing appetite suppression. And it’s critical to avoid post-workout snacks that replace the calories burned, undoing any gains if you’re aiming for weight loss. You only need to refuel after exercise if you’re an athlete. These guidelines can help steer you in the right direction in your weight loss journey, encouraging mindfulness and discipline.
Adding intervals to your exercise can also help. In the Wilfrid Laurier University study, researchers compared the effects of an easy run with two different HIIT-style workouts: one involving 60 seconds of all-out running on a treadmill followed by 60 seconds of gentle jogging or walking, repeated ten times; the other comprising eight 15-second sprints on an indoor bike with two minutes of rest between each burst. A control group sat and relaxed.
Lactate levels were much higher after the two HIIT workouts, and participants ate 129 fewer calories after the running HIIT and 201 fewer calories after the bike session compared with the controls. Steady-state running, meanwhile, did not affect appetite and food intake. Generally, studies show that the more effort you put into exercise, the better the effect on your appetite.
As tempting as it might be to swim when it’s warm outside, swimming is likely to leave you hungrier than before you dive in. Researchers suggest the body uses more energy to generate heat when submerged in cool water, which might explain post-pool cravings.
You don’t have to go out with hard sprints and intervals to get healthy and curb your appetite. Adding more effort to a walk or run can be enough to burn more calories and reduce appetite to some degree. Even an hour of moderate walking could help prevent overeating. Whether gentle or vigorous, exercise will have some impact on calorie expenditure and consumption. If you do it daily, it can help with weight control.
