Hi everyone this is Monica Reinagle the nutrition diva here with this week's quick and dirty tips for eating well and feeling fabulous and this week we're talking about how to recharge after exercise without overeating. I got an email from Cho who writes, I'm a kickboxer who trains for two hours a day five days a week and by the time I get home around 8 p.m. I am famished and even though I ate well all day I just go crazy. I'm not trying to lose weight but I don't like overeating or that desperate feeling of

hunger I get after a hard workout. What can I do? or that

desperate feeling of hunger I get after a hard workout. What can I do to stave off this caveman-like hunger

that occurs at the worst possible hour of the day?

Now many people, myself included, find that exercise temporarily

suppresses hunger. For example, I really dislike exercising with any food in my

stomach, so I'm often a little bit hungry when I

begin exercising. By the time I'm done though I have absolutely no hunger but this is a

pretty short-lived effect.

The fact is that exercise eventually makes you hungry

and the more intensely you exercise, the hungrier you are likely to get.

This is one of the reasons that exercise alone usually fails as a weight

loss strategy. In fact, women often end up more than compensating for the calories they burned through exercise through increased

food intake. Now infuriatingly, this does not seem to be the case for men. On the other hand, women's bodies are quicker to burn body fat

during exercise than men, so at least there's that. Even though exercise alone

is not a magic bullet for weight loss.

There are tons of other benefits to exercising regularly,

such as cardiovascular health,

reduced inflammation, better blood sugar control,

reduced risk of many cancers, improved hormone balance and so on.

Exercise also has a role to play in weight loss, of course.

You just also need to keep an eye on what you're eating. But in Cho's case, weight loss is not the goal.

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