It’s no secret that one thing people struggle with while on a diet is hunger. Hunger is often what sends you off your diet and into the pantry hunting for something to fill the void in your stomach.
What signals hunger is a very complex process – one that has been studied over and over again by research scientists who are looking to help get a bigger picture over why we eat.
Many of the studies have demonstrated that there are ways to control hunger – have protein with each meal, watch the type of carbohydrates you are eating, add about 5-9 grams of fat with each meal to boost satiety, and so on.
Recently, researchers wanted to look at the effects of performing exercise on the energy regulating hormones in the body and the corresponding increases in appetite seen between males and females.
Prior research had demonstrated that when previously sedentary males and females participated in exercise without including any dietary restrictions, males lost body fat while the females did not. Is there more to this connection?
Since exercise is one of the most common strategies for helping to lower body fat, understanding if there is a hunger connection between the sexes could prove to be very helpful.
The Study Design
The study was set up so 9 overweight males and females would perform 4 sessions of exercise with extra calories burned during this exercise added to their baseline (maintenance) diets to account for the activity and then 4 more sessions of exercise where this energy was not added back to the baseline (maintenance) diet.
After the exercise was completed, the concentrations of ghrelin, insulin, and leptin were observed, which are all the hunger regulating hormones in the body.
The Results of the Study
The results of the study demonstrated that men did not show any alterations in ghrelin levels either without exercise or with in either of the dietary conditions, while the females had higher ghrelin after the exercise sessions regardless of whether food was added to the diet to compensate for the additional calories burned.
Looking at insulin, the results showed that levels were reduced after the exercise with no food replacement sessions were performed but not after the exercise sessions where food was given to compensate for the calories burned.
In women however, insulin was lower under both conditions when exercise was performed.
Summing Up The Findings
Therefore, from the results it was demonstrated that after an exercise session, women are more physiologically primed to be hungry than males are. Males will experience an increase in hunger after exercise if the calories burned during exercise are not replaced, but if they are, hunger levels will be not be increased.
Practical Application
From this study we can see again that a female’s body will protect her against low body fat levels harder than a males will. Females do require a higher body fat percentage to maintain proper health and it appears as though the hunger hormones in the body further serve this purpose, making hunger set in when women start doing more exercise in efforts to lose body fat.
To apply this to your own program, if you are woman, you may want to think about using more dietary control in your efforts towards weight loss than ramping up your exercise levels considerably.
While some exercise is certainly good for weight loss, if you do too much you may begin experiencing rampant levels of hunger, at which point sticking with the diet may become much more difficult.
Reference:
Chipkin, Sr. et al. (2008) Effects of exercise on energy regulating hormones and appetite in men and women. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol. December 10.
Related posts:
- Research Study: More Proof Intense Cardio is Superior for Weight Loss
- Research Study: The Dairy Intake and Weight Loss Connection
- Research Study: Fat Loading Versus Carb Loading and Performance
- Research Study: Further Reasons To Not Shun Milk From Your Diet
- Research Study: Testosterone and Cortisol Responses With Three Different Loading Schemes
