Monday 8 June 2009

Interval training and appetite

Rusty over at fitnessblackbook.com has just written an interesting post suggesting that interval training reduces appetite. Here is the link.

The article says that interval training reduces some compounds called catecholamines which reduce appetite. Looking up catecholamines on wikipedia gives us a few compounds we've heard much more about - adrenaline, noradrenaline and dopamine. Together, these compounds prepare the body for 'fight-or-flight', increasing heart rate, blood pressure, and blood glucose levels.

Presumably this is why these chemicals reduce appetite - it's hard to fight or run away if you're tucking into a hamburger(!)

To be honest, so far, I've not noticed a big difference in my appetite since starting interval training, though perhaps I'm not doing it religiously enough - either not long enough or not often enough. For instance, I haven't actually been for a run for a week (too many evenings out on work functions, and then the most unbelievably bad weather this weekend) so I'm going to need to step things up. After all, only 3 weeks until the Sam Run 10k!!!