Weight Training & Appetite: A cyclical Struggle with Body Composition
A 24-year-old is seeking strategies to reconcile a love of weight training with a renewed desire to lose weight, highlighting a common challenge for fitness enthusiasts.
For years, maintaining a healthy weight felt straightforward. As a child, the individual maintained a normal weight, but teenage years brought a significant shift in eating habits. Describing a tendency to finish everything on their plate, they developed a pattern of overeating that led to weight gain.
By age 21, they reached a peak weight of 120 kilograms.A dedicated effort to reduce caloric intake followed, resulting in a 37-kilogram weight loss over ten months, bringing their weight down to 63 kilograms by age 22. Feeling physically and mentally improved, they then transitioned to weight training, shifting focus from weight loss to building strength and muscle.
This transition involved increasing food intake, especially protein, under the assumption that weight training would prevent fat gain by efficiently converting calories into muscle. However,this proved inaccurate. Currently weighing 75 kilograms, the individual acknowledges gaining both muscle and fat.
The core issue now is managing increased appetite stimulated by weight training while concurrently aiming to create a caloric deficit for fat loss. Despite successfully achieving a significant weight loss previously, they are seeking guidance on how to repeat that success while continuing to prioritize their fitness routine. The challenge lies in balancing the demands of exercise with the need for appetite control to achieve desired body composition goals.
