So I have recently started to work out, been lifting weights in the gym monday to friday for about a month now. As expected, over the weekdays, i.e on the days I work out, my appetite has become quite big and I feel hungry and been eating a lot more than before. And its all been healthy food as well, like wholemeal bread sandwiches with salad and lean turkey meat, bananas for snacking in between meals, etc etc. In summary, on weekdays, I feel hungry a lot more and eat about 4-5 meals a day, and all healthy food.Over the weekend, i.e. Saturday and Sunday, I completely lose my appetite. I never feel hungry and don't feel like eating at all. What I want to know is why ? I am afraid, that by not eating enough over the weekend, my body would start to 'eat' my muscles and the whole week's worth of training would have gone to waste. Can this happen ? I do eat over the weekend, but definitely not as much as I would eat on a weekday, and that too, the only reason I eat is because I know I need to eat something and not because I feel hungry. In fact, I feel I could go for a whole day without eating and not feel hungry on a weekend.FYI, I do splits training, i.e. train a different body part each day from monday-friday and then take saturday-sunday off for rest. I have also seen a minor but noticeable difference (increase) in terms of muscle size and shape and I have put on about 3-4 kgs of weight, which I assume is all muscle as I dont see any visible increase in fatness....if that makes any sense.I am just concerned I may be losing muscle mass over the weekends.. Created by rOcKsT*R. health-import - menx27s-health-import

Why do I lose my appetite over the weekend ?

May 2021 3 232 Report

Why do I lose my appetite over the weekend ?

So I have recently started to work out, been lifting weights in the gym monday to friday for about a month now. As expected, over the weekdays, i.e on the days I work out, my appetite has become quite big and I feel hungry and been eating a lot more than before. And its all been healthy food as well, like wholemeal bread sandwiches with salad and lean turkey meat, bananas for snacking in between meals, etc etc. In summary, on weekdays, I feel hungry a lot more and eat about 4-5 meals a day, and all healthy food.

Over the weekend, i.e. Saturday and Sunday, I completely lose my appetite. I never feel hungry and don't feel like eating at all. What I want to know is why ? I am afraid, that by not eating enough over the weekend, my body would start to 'eat' my muscles and the whole week's worth of training would have gone to waste. Can this happen ? I do eat over the weekend, but definitely not as much as I would eat on a weekday, and that too, the only reason I eat is because I know I need to eat something and not because I feel hungry. In fact, I feel I could go for a whole day without eating and not feel hungry on a weekend.

FYI, I do splits training, i.e. train a different body part each day from monday-friday and then take saturday-sunday off for rest. I have also seen a minor but noticeable difference (increase) in terms of muscle size and shape and I have put on about 3-4 kgs of weight, which I assume is all muscle as I dont see any visible increase in fatness....if that makes any sense.

I am just concerned I may be losing muscle mass over the weekends.

Health / Men's Health

Connor

Verified answer

That's normal. When you workout you burn lots of cals and you burn a lot of fat if you do cardio (if you aren't doing cardio then you will only be gaining body fat by eating tons). When you burn cals at the gym your body needs nutrients for muscle repair so it's going to make you hungry. You are also feeling like this because you have recently started increasing activity level so your body is reacting to it in a way where it doesn't want you to lose weight. So it's keeping your hungry.

Now there are a few things you should be doing if you want to increase muscle and lose fat. You should be consuming a decent amount of protein per day. 150+ grams of protein per day. Now you want this to be lean and healthy protein. Looking at what you are eating it doesn't seem like you are doing this. Those healthy foods are good but they don't contain a lot of protein, which means you are wasting your time at the gym since you can't build muscle without adequate protein intake.

Also you need to learn to control your hunger. You can't just eat eat eat and eat some more just because you are working out. You will end up gaining body fat with the muscle if you are eating the right things at the right time. Try a Whey protien shake after hitting the gym. Whey protien is very quickly absorbed into the body, so when consumed within a half hour of working out will provide your muscles with adequate nutrients and protien it needs to rebuild, it will also keep you feeling full and less likely to gorge on food.

On days you don't workout, your body doesn't burn very many calories, so it's not going to be as hungry. So take this as a time to eat smaller meals. On days you don't work out you don't need to be as concered with protien intake so make these your lower calorie days. No sense in putting things in your body you won't be burning off. Your metabolism is going to change based on your activity level, so if you aren't as active your metabolism slows down and the food you eat goes a long way. (You aren't burning through it in a workout)

As long as you are consuming good lean protien throughout the day and not going nuts on other pointless calories when you feel hungry you should be fine, but I do recommend adding cardio to your weight lifting to make sure you aren't gaining body fat. You can't binge on food just because you weight lift. Just increase protien, not over all calories consumed.

-Connor