Why Exercise Is Making You Hangry + 3 Ways To Stop It

Exercise is powerful medicine, and women struggle to use it to heal and support their hormones instead of wrecking them partly because the type and dose that's right for one woman may be the exact thing that doesn't work at all for her girlfriend or her sister. 

Many women also haven't been taught how to listen to their own hormonal talk: the clues our hormones give us all day tell us how they are doing with our current diet, lifestyle, and workout style. Instead of heeding their hormonal messages, they keep going—or worse, they double down on exercise that isn't working, assuming something is wrong with them, that they need to try harder, #beastmode, #noexcuses, or other nonsense that makes women think it's their fault. So they trudge ahead; they keep going, and with that they drive their hormones into further disarray.

Exercise is a stress on our hormonal system and metabolism, and we can harness that for favorable change to our health and body composition, or it can become just another stress on our already overburdened system, and in some cases, it can backfire entirely by causing weight gain that can be due to an increase in appetite after we've upped our exercise. 

There are certain exercises such as walking that tend to be hormonally balancing3 without causing excessive cortisol release and subsequent uptick in appetite and cravings4. I recommend five walks per week, outdoors if possible, for 45 to 60 minutes.

Research also shows that walking makes us happier5, and when we've got more happy-making brain chemicals around like dopamine, we seek out less comfort food or alcohol6 to make ourselves feel better and boost our mood.

More intense, shorter exercise sessions tend to suppress ghrelin and thus appetite7 even though they do stimulate cortisol. So if you are not suffering from HPA-axis dysfunction (commonly called adrenal fatigue), are overly inflamed, or are hypothyroid, this may be your best bet for exercise.

Lifting heavier weights (fewer reps, i.e., five sets of five reps, with plenty of rest and focusing on complex movements like squats, deadlifts, overhead press, etc.) is almost always a win in my book as it improves lean mass (thus improving metabolism and insulin sensitivity8 over the long haul), imparts strength not only for daily living, but with fewer injuries, longevity, and autonomy as we age, but it also can be a way to harness the power of strength training without putting the heat on your cortisol response. 

We can't forget the mindset trick we sometimes play on ourselves after a hard workout. You know what I mean if you've ever caught yourself saying, I've worked so hard, I've earned it! This can have us indulging in treats or excess calories because we feel we've offset it with the exercise we've just done. 

Exercise is an important aspect of our health, but when it comes to weight loss, research has continually shown us9 that focusing on diet and nutrition helps expedite the process more than exercise does (the best results come when you do them in tandem). So the idea that we can work it off at the gym is something many of us believe but one we should work to let go of as it doesn't serve us well most of the time.

And remember that there’s still a whole lot we do not understand about the human metabolism and especially about more nuanced and dynamic factors that influence behavior, appetite, and hormones such as our gut microbiome. As well, we always want to filter advice and research through a curious lens as we try to apply that to ourselves, our current hormone landscape, and our goals.