I am getting back to running after a one year hiatus from injury. When I previously ran I was paleo and biggest run ever was a half marathon which i did with only water and a few dried banana chips. I run in a fasted state on all morning runs. afternoon/evening runs aren’t my favorite but thats when my social week night runs happen and my group runs.
My biggest issue with trying to reestablish my running routine is it make me so damn hungry after. Normally I am fine all day with my current routine. But once i get in a run i get hungry. Currently I have only gotten myself back up to a 3 mile distance and have been able to handle. my fear is a s I ramp up and get back to say 10-15 miles a week maybe 10K distance again they will be harder to control.
Seems for weightloss purposes your better off not running. But it is so good for health purposes.
Running makes you so hungry
Running links
I’m not a runner but I know runners that have developed joints and back issues from the pounding.
In your case, hunger might subside after you get back into your regular routine.
Are you looking at heart rate? Dr. Phil Maffetone’s MAF method is to stay below aerobic threshhold (180-age) to build up fat-burning machinery and mitochondria. Seems like being hungry is a sign of using up glycogen. See Primal Endurance podcast for more.
Running does the opposite for me. Kills my appetite. I’ve run a marathon but got so burned out that I quit all running for the last 3 years to focus on lifting. Today I started C25K and running for 2 minutes seemed awesome, lol. I’m not sure how to stay at my MAF level since I run pretty slowly anyway? It’s around 136 bpm but I average 150. Thoughts?
I started exercising again about 2 months ago. Thanks to keto and increased energy, 70lbs down and I actually WANTED to. Anyway, I swim and for the first month I was getting really hungry before my hour+ swim was over. I swim first thing in the morning and have my BP coffee afterward. My doctor said when I started back to exercise that grehlin goes up. Then it settles down. I still have hungry days sometimes, but my electrolyte drink solves it. I added an extra spoon of coconut oil or ghee mid-morning which takes care of peckishness. Really though, the hunger abated after a month.
I’m tempted to say the hunger is because of habit though I don’t know that for sure. I know it’s a very common phenomenon and it used to apply to me as well, especially after swimming and skiing, and there are studies showing it’s a real effect and pretty much universal (and incidentally the hunger is disproportionately larger than energy expended during exercise and therefore putting another nail in the coffin of the idea that exercise alone is a useful weight loss approach).
Exercise does make you stressed, and stress makes you hungry, so that’s another avenue that could be explored. Especially if you already have relatively elevated levels of stress, adding exercise on top of that could be what makes the body flip a switch and go “that’s it, it’s decided that times are tough and we need to consume everything we come across to make sure we get through this.” At least temporarily.
With this in mind I have a couple suggestions for experiments you could run. I’m not guaranteeing any of these will work, they’re just different (hopefully informed) ways to switch things up. It’s up to you to evaluate what works.
First, to break the habit you could power through it. Don’t eat after running and after a while you’ll stop expecting it. Could take a long time and could be rather unpleasant, especially if it turns out it doesn’t work.
Or you could do something other than running, preferably something with a different type of load so that you feel different after. Biking might be too similar because that too is relatively small movements repeated at a high frequency, but for example walking up a steep hill is large, strong movements at a much slower pace while swimming makes you use every muscle in your body in a continuous fashion. All of these exercises will wear you out, but you’ll feel differently exhausted and that might not trigger the same hunger after.
Secondly, just give in to the hunger. There are two ways to do this, the first is by just eating more in general. It’s going to slow weight loss, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing as much of that extra energy is being used by the body to recover and improve your health in general. In the long run it could actually turn out to be beneficial for weight loss. The second way is to focus your food after exercise. Eat larger dinners and reduce the size of your other meals, and if you run in the morning, have dinner for breakfast.
If stress is the problem and you can’t easily identify and fix other sources of stress then not exercising might be the best option. A better option, however, is maybe to just decrease the intensity of the exercise. You could run for less, maybe just 10-15 minutes just to get the blood flowing and get your day started the right way. Or you could go for a walk instead. I’m a big fan of long periods of low intensity activity and find that long, relatively leisurely walks provide me with a ton of benefits. One of them is that you get much of the stress-reducing benefits of exercise without the stress-inducing exhaustion and need for recovery more intense exercise produces. You don’t have to completely give up running either, you can still do it on some days. Maybe you make a schedule, maybe you decide depending on how you feel that day.
These are just a few suggestions anyway. I’m sure you can come up with more on your own, you know your own situation much better than I do.
Think the only reliable way to do it is a heart-rate monitor with alerts past a given threshhold. I have a Polar M400 watch, have heard that the $25 Polar FT1 is a workable low-end choice.