Everything you need to know if you also feel hungry after training

 

You've just finished training and a feeling of hunger hits you . It is not something strange, but rather a common sensation, especially after having completed an intense training session . This phenomenon will depend on a series of factors related to the functioning of our body and its reaction to sports practice.

Furthermore, it must be taken into account that this increase in appetite after sports practice is not linked to the burning of calories , contrary to what we may think, but rather occurs due to a decrease in blood glucose (sugar) levels . that provide us with immediate energy, present in muscle glycogen. This decrease in sugar in our body causes the mobilization of our reserve and awakens this feeling of hunger in our brain.

It is not something that happens to all people equally, because on the other hand, we find other people for whom the practice of physical exercise does not cause this sensation or, quite the contrary, what it generates is a loss of appetite. As we anticipated, this is because physiological factors intervene that vary in each person . They influence, for example, age, sex, type of diet or sports activity that you do regularly. And to that we must also add the characteristics of the exercise , because depending on its intensity and duration, they influence the increase in appetite.

What if you eat after doing sports?

But let's focus on the case of those who are hungry: if we eat immediately after performing physical exercise, we must do so in a healthy way , not only with respect to the nutrients that we are going to incorporate, but also in terms of the way to do it. Taking this into account, the experts from the Nutrition Area of ​​Club Metropolitan offer us these recommendations on the diet to follow after the activity.

1. Prioritize quality proteins. Where can you find them? In foods of animal origin, such as eggs, fish or yogurt, or vegetables, such as tofu or almonds to help muscle recovery.

2. Don't rule out carbohydrates . Their consumption is also healthy as long as they come from products with low caloric density, such as fruits, which help recovery.

3. Avoid those foods that provide us with false feeling of satiety and that, in addition, they restore a good part of the calories that we have burned during exercise. These include, for example, pastries, sweets and cookies with a high level of sugar or processed meats.

4. Also, as a last note, remember that it is not necessary to eat food immediately after completing the training . “The anabolic window, the period of time after a session of physical activity in which the ingestion of nutrients is recommended, is not the same in all people, it varies depending on the usual diet and can extend up to 30-40 minutes. beyond the minutes after exercise,” they detail.

And before training?

We must also consider the best feeding dynamics before training. “It is generally advisable to eat before training and it is not a good idea to exercise if you have fasted for more than 10 hours . When in doubt, it is always better to eat some food before training than to go without eating anything, and thus ensure the energy demands that our body requires during sports practice," they conclude.