hunger a sign of growth stimulation?

[Elle]

When I do HIIT I crave carbs like crazy. CrossFit made me gain so many pounds in donuts and sugary "recovery" drinks. I suspect it's because of the glycogen depleting nature of anaerobic exercise.

Lifting makes me crave more food in general and protein in particular.

It's actually really interesting to me how much hungrier I am the day after a lift (I work out in the evening) than other days. The calorie differential is usually 500 on the dot.
Mildly interesting is that my Garmin thinks I burn 350-400 calories per lift session. But that doesn't account for extra calories burned during recovery.

[Jovan Dragisic]

It took me a while to get to the point where I could get enough good food into me. When I was young I didn't have trouble eating a lot, but once I hit 30 that all changed. Since I didn't start training until I was 35, I drank a lot of protein shakes to get enough protein. That wasn't great, so I tried an approach that is more like the Vertical Diet. Lots of rice, lots of ground beef. I make my own mash along the lines of Stan Efferding's Monster Mash. I had to ramp up to 5 meals a day. I started with second breakfast, then added second lunch when I was getting hungry mid-afternoon. For some lucky bastards eating a lot of food is easy. For the rest of us it takes planning and practice.

I've always been a big eater and could gain weight easily, but this NLP thing had become ridiculous after a certain point. I know i can't recover properly if I don't stuff my face, and I'm not talking eating clean, I've never eaten clean in my life. But like, I no longer have an appetite, pretty much every meal is a struggle. I still finish it though. It's not that I'm afraid of fat, I know that for every ounce of fat I get several of muscle, just the fucking eating.

[MAD9692]

Eating is the hardest part IMO.
3,000 calories isn't hard but when you need to eat 5,000 calories day in and day out for months on end to make the needle move, it gets really hard. The fear of getting crushed on training days and not making my reps always made my appetite grow.