I like to think that I watch what I eat: I avoid fast food, try to eat foods that aren't processed, and am working on cutting out refined sugars and bleached wheat, things like that. But I'm also an over eater. I love to eat and I'll eat until I'm full. In fact, I'll eat beyond full. I know I shouldn't, but when there is food before me I feel compelled to eat it.
Christmas and New Years, basically the entire Holiday Season, is tough for me because I always overeat. I don't even intentionally overeat, but I'm just surrounded by food all day. First there are appetizers, then there is food (and a full plate - far more than I'd normally eat), followed by dessert. Maybe the situation is that I visit my parents, where the house is always stacked with desserts and sweets of various types. However, I've never had it this bad. Although I've felt pretty terrible after some meals, like I'm ready to pass out, I have never thought I was dying or found it necessary to head to the ER to remove undigested meatballs.
A friend of mine recently wrote that this is one of the reasons why we run: we run so we can eat. A lot. The flip of it is, that we eat to be able to run. (I'll do another post on good things to eat during a run, and after a run, etc., but I'll leave it for another time.) I've always wondered why I get hungry sometimes and not others. I always thought that it's proportional to how hard I've worked out, or, more precisely how long of a run I've been on. But that's not always so. There are times that I've got for a long run and not felt any hungrier than before. This has really baffled me. Until Now!
This article, written by Elena Conis, talks about "compensation." I'd never heard of this phenomenon, but it makes perfect sense. When people work out hard they tend to reward themselves with whatever food they want whenever they want it. She says:
The...phenomenon led some scientists to speculate, as far back as a few decades ago, that exercise might not be a reliable means of shedding pounds. The reason, they proposed, was because it seemed to stimulate the appetite. Studies have since shown that exercise can induce hunger. But it doesn't do so in all people, and the effect is usually only temporary. Researchers surmise that the tendency to compensate is driven partially by actual hunger and partially by psychological factors. Why some people compensate and others don't remains a mystery.
If you run 5 miles, you won't loose any weight if you eat 10 miles worth of food, especially if you never ate that much food to begin with. But according to the article, it is more complicated than that. People don't tend to realize how much work it takes to burn one calorie, and realize how one little treat can undo all that work. But what baffled me before, why I was hungry after some workouts and not after others, may just be a temporary flux based upon the intensity of the workout:
Researchers at the University of Leeds in England and the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, concluded that exercisers increase their caloric intake a few days into a new regimen. But most people, they found, compensate only enough to make up for one-third of the excess calories they burned through exercise -- and the effect appears to be temporary...
While this article doesn't explain why this happens, it does show that when you begin to work out, or ramp up the intensity, you'll be hungrier for a few days and you'll compensate. Then the desire to eat more will just fade away. I think the body just gets used to working harder on a lesser amount of fuel, so there is no need to eat more, but that's just speculation.
So I guess the take away is if you're trying to lose weight, exercise and watch what you eat, especially after you work out. But make sure to give your body what it is asking for. If your body is asking you to stop eating, it's probably a good idea to pay attention to that too.