A lot of people on here post with a question similar to this:

"I'm not hungry, it's after dinner, and I worked out, do I still need to eat the extra calories?"

And there are almost always 2 very separate and distinct thoughts on this.


I would like to clear up how it's geared to work if you follow MFP's recommendations explicitly.

Just so we have a solid starting point, let’s assume that the person in question has done the goals wizard
and put in the correct information and chosen an appropriate goal for weekly weight loss (not always true, but we have to start somewhere).

With the above statement as a given, the two opinions are basically:

1) Eat them, always.

and

2) If you're not hungry, don't eat or "Listen to your body."


Before we go any further, I'd like to detail how the human body normally registers hunger and how that normal process can become distorted in people who are unhealthy.

For people who are at a healthy weight, and have no metabolic conditions, and who eat generally healthy, hunger is a sign of energy need. When you need energy, your body sends out signals in the form of hormones that trigger the brain to say "feed me!” . The two main hormones affecting hunger levels are Ghrelin and Leptin. Ghrelin is a short term, "feed me now" hormone that governs our immediate desire for food, whereas Leptin is a longer term satiety response to feeding. These two hormones work in concert to each other. When healthy, the hormones are sent out at the correct times and in the correct amounts based on how much energy is needed.

The first argument (Eat them, always)


Studies done on these hormones suggest that in obese people, the central nervous system may become desensitized to the Leptin response (RE: Roles of Leptin and Ghrelin in the Loss of Body Weight Caused by a Low Fat, High Carbohydrate Diet" - The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism 88(4):1577–1586 ).

Research is unclear as yet as to the exact cause of the insensitivity to these hormones, but the outcome is the same, essentially in many obese people, hormones are incorrectly interpreted. This means that for those of you (myself included in the past) who aren't considered to be at a "normal" or "healthy" weight (I.E. obese) may not be receiving the correct signals about when to eat, when not to eat, and how much to eat to satiate your hunger levels.
That means you should be relying on our higher brain function to figure out when to eat and when not to eat. Eventually, your body will correct the hormone insensitivity, but until that occurs, it's not accurate to say that your body knows when it needs energy.

The second argument (eat when you are hungry).

This works if you're generally healthy, but only to a degree. If weight loss has been an issue in your past, many times eating is a psychological "control" issue, and thus even if our body is physically sending out certain levels of hormones, your brain could be either masking those hormone levels and/or heightening the sensitivity to those levels subconsciously in order to satisfy some primal response to trauma in your life. At least until you can confirm that your body is correctly signaling for food, you should be very aware of when you feel hungry, and how much you are eating before you feel full.


It boils down to this: You can't just "eat when you're hungry", you must make sure, first, that your body is correctly telling you when to eat and how much, and until you can confirm that, you should NOT trust those signals.


The question then becomes: How do I eat those extra calories.
It's actually not that difficult, but it takes practice. You must do some prep work ahead of time, if you know you're going to be exercising on a given day, estimate how much, and add extra calories throughout the day, don't try to stuff yourself at the end of the day, after a few weeks of this, it's not that difficult to do, but you do have to actively practice it or it won't work. Make it a habit, that's the easiest way to do it.

Hope this helps people out there.

-Banks

Thanks for posting this :)

That is really informative! Thank you for sharing!

Yay! Love it.

Thank you. A very interesting and thoughtful post!

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Thanks for the great info.

Thank you for citing your source.

Excellent post as usual.

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Great post. I try to eat half my exercise calories at least and start eating them earlier in the day. The scary thing is if I don't make it to work out...hasn't happened yet, but I always worry about that. Also, I found when I don't start eating them earlier, then I don't have the energy needed to do my workouts...

Great post, thank you! I've been getting frustrated that the forum questions often fight this basic knowledge and logic that you have presented here.

very good post!

Great, science based info. If we could just listen to our bodies and do what's right instinctively, NONE of us would be here. LOL. We all have to learn or re-learn how to eat and exercise right. Thank you.

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Well written as usual. Thanks for covering this topic as there are very many people who are having trouble with this. I have gone through this and seen the different results. I eat how much my plan tells me and when I have it planned to eat and NEVER have trouble clearing my plate. If I do plan on working out late, I eat up earlier to FORCE me to follow through on the planned exercise.

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Great post! Thank you.

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Perfect. As per your usual. Love it when you give great informative advise in layman's terms! You rock, Banks!

So one thing I see once in a while is the "What if I plan to eat exercise calories but then I don't exercise?"

I propose a simple solution to this small problem. Never exercise more than your deficit. Or at least not on days where you aren't absolutely sure you will be able to exercise.

What does this do? You may ask. Think about it logically, OK so maybe you don't LOSE any weight that day, but if you don't exercise more than your deficit then you can't eat more than maintenance, so you'd never actually gain weight. It's a bit of an insurance policy.

I.E. my maintenance is 2675, say I want a 500 calorie deficit to lose 1 lb a week.

so on any normal day MFP sets me up to eat 2175 calories, now, if I'm exercising that day for say 400 calories, I'll plan on 2575 calories for that day, but say I became really busy that day and couldn't exercise, well I'm still at a deficit for the day, but it's only 100 instead of 500. Not AWESOME, but not a tragedy either.

This is a good post. I think the one thing it left me thinking is that this it more important (eat those exercise calories) if you are running a large deficit close to 1200 for women or 1500 for men. If you deficit is small (say a goal of .5 pounds a week or maybe even 1 pound per week) you have more flexibility here unless it was a killer workout with a huge burn. If it was what seems like a more average burn 300-500 calories, with that smaller deficit you have a good deal of wiggle room. When you are pushing the deficit with a 1.5 or 2 pound per week loss, you don't have that room to work with and have to find ways to eat those calories.

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I agree with this to an extent. But most of the people who have a conservative deficit NEED a conservative deficit because they don't have much to lose (I'm mostly talking of .5 lb here). And, let's face it, the number of people who put in a lower deficit rather than higher are kinda few and far between. But most of the folks who do use a lower deficit have so little body fat that they're just as, if not more, vulnerable to the effects of underfeeding. Obviously not a problem for a day, but over time a real issue.

thank you!