It's been my experience that a growth stimulus is accompanied by a noticeable increase in appetite, especially when you're younger and able to grow. I'll bet everybody agrees.
Coach Rip,
Finally back in the gym from doing 6+ months of dumbbells at home, could not stand it any more. I’ll wear a freakin mask to get to work out.
Of course, starting back very slowly with baby weights, will do my LP to get poundages back up to where they were. Tanita scale says 3 lb muscle loss, 2 lb fat gain in this time, sort of expected. The fluff stuff can keep some atrophy away but not all of it.
After doing only 1x5 for the big 4 with light weights, my appetite is through the roof. The past few months, my appetite was just so so, would skip a meal sometimes. I have noticed this before, especially after a deadlift workout. Not surprisingly, after a home / machine / light workout, my appetite does not go above normal.
Dr Doug McGuff has mentioned that when you do a workout that actually stimulates growth, your appetite will go up on its own. The corollary is that workouts that do not stimulate anything do not affect hunger. It is like being a teenager, where their growth stimulation is on 24/7 and they are eating you out of house and home. The goal of training is basically to make out bodies think we are a teenager again and grow.
What is your experience with yourself (about my age) and others you coach regarding appetite being heightened by an “effective” workout? Of course, a strength increase is the objective measure, just wondering how correlated hunger is to future (next 36 hours or so) strength gains.
Would like to hear from other coaches and trainees as well.
Thanks
It's been my experience that a growth stimulus is accompanied by a noticeable increase in appetite, especially when you're younger and able to grow. I'll bet everybody agrees.
When I lift I can feel myself crave protein (mostly just meat and milk). When I do endurance sport I feel myself crave carbohydrate (and to a lesser extent fat). I'd say if you're in tune with your body it's a very convenient feature to know what macronutrients you need based on your cravings.
Sure, but this only works in the early stages. Eating enough to grow at some point is much harder than the training. I mean, getting 5000 calories of sugar is easy, but ineffective. Getting 5000 calories from actual food is really hard.
It was never hard for me.
But you are a fat slob with a horrible PHISIQUE
I have the same thing. I was doing a ton of bjj and would get crazy cravings for sweets, especially yellow cake. I dropped that and started doing a lp after some time off and I am craving steak and sweet potatoes for some reason. Maybe placebo but I definitely notice the carb cravings after a lot of endurance training.
From an old post:
Quote Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe:
Okay, you want to know what I ate. I ’ ll tell you. I have eaten a dozen eggs for breakfast before, but always ate 6 with toast and milk, and 5 bowls of raisin bran was quite normal until my members asked me to stop doing that. I have eaten 11 10-oz. steaks at an all-you-can-eat steak deal – several of us went there, and the special was discontinued the following week. I have eaten 4 very large plates of spaghetti and meat sauce in 30 minutes. I have eaten 15 pork chops + vegetables at the Olympic Training Center back when the food was really good. I have eaten 225 shrimp in an hour. At a seafood buffet in Michigan, I ate 10 lobsters and the claws off of 10 more, in addition to shrimp, crab legs, lobster bisque, clam chowder, and bread, in 2 hours. I have eaten 7 big bowls of Mongolian BBQ. I have had a gallon of milk in less than 30 minutes. I was very expensive to feed, but I am told by reputable sources that I was absolutely nothing compared to Phil Grippaldi.
And folks, for weight-gaining purposes, " eating clean " is not a useful concept. Big Macs are.
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.