Eating After Long Run When Not Hungry

Have you ever finished a long run or tough workout and know you have to refuel, but you’re just not hungry?

This actually happens a lot (and we’ll explain why).

Plus, if this does happen to you, what should you do? Coach Jeff gives you some awesome tips to get through these days and still ensure you recover properly.


Audio Transcript

Jeff: Welcome to the Runners Connect, Run to the Top Extra Kick Podcast.

Today’s question is from Julie. And Julie asked, “I noticed that on long run days, my appetite just isn’t there. I know I need to refuel but I don’t feel hungry and I’m not even craving food at all. I still eat normal, just like any other day, but I wonder if that’s normal. What should I do about it? Sometimes, the next day or two days after the long run, my hunger comes on suddenly. Should I try to eat more on the long run day or just listen to my body and eat when I’m hungry?

Julie, this is a great question because it happens to a lot of runners.

It not only happens on long run days but it can happen on speed workout or tough tempo run days.

The reasons for it is that a lot of times, on these really hard workouts, you’re stressing yourself or stressing your body.

Usually what’s happening in these cases, is that as your body starts to work harder and harder, it starts to shut down less essential bodily aspects.

So, one of those things is your digestive system though it is not vital to you performing in running hard or running long.

What happens is your body will slow down that process and shut it off in a way.

That way, it can divert those resources to making sure that you run hard or run long, you know, hard efforts.

So, sometimes that can manifest itself and continue on when you’re in your daily life.

It can take a few hours, sometimes a day for your stomach to kick back into gear and your body to start to feel normal.

This is a very common thing and it happens a lot.

The reason this is a great question is because, even though you don’t feel like eating, it’s still critically important for you to refuel.

And you mentioned that you know that you need to refuel, so I know that you know that it’s important.

But not taking in enough calories to compensate for the amount of the distance you’re covering or effort that you’re putting in, is hampering that recovery and potentially making it so that you’re not recovering as quickly as you should be, for these workouts.

My number one suggestion to you is to try to drink your calories on those days.

This is what I always recommend for runners, when it comes to nutrition, but specifically in the case of long run days.

We have a calculator at Runners Connect that allows you to calculate the exact number of calories that you’re burning, both without any run, so, no exercise for the day.

And in addition, how many calories you’re going to burn with your run.

You can head to runnersconnect.net, and I believe it’s calorie-calculator. If it’s not, just google runners connect calorie calculator.

Basically what you do is, you input all your height and weight; all that kind of stuff. And then you can input the run that you did.

What you’ll notice is that on your long run days, you need to eat significantly more calories than you do for your regular days.

That’s going to give you a good overview of how many calories you need to eat for that particular day.

You can still eat your normal meal, if that makes sense.

Let’s say that a normal day, you run five miles. You use the calorie calculator and you can see that on a normal running day, let’s say just for the sake of numbers here, that you need to eat 2,000 calories plus another 300 calories for the five miles that you run.

Your total calorie intake for the day is 2,300 calories. Now, because your long run is three times the distance, you can see that you’ll need to eat about 2,900 calories.

That means you can eat your normal meals throughout the day, just like you mentioned.

You’re not craving any food, and you still eat like normal. You can still eat your 2,000 to 2,300 calories, but you can use shakes or liquid calories to make up that 300 to 600 deficit, that you’re in because of your long run or your speed workout or whatever it may be.

When I say liquid calories, that can come in a couple of different forms.

My favorite is to make shakes. You can make a high calorie healthy, and just because something is high calorie, it doesn’t mean it’s unhealthy.

It can be, but you can make high quality, high calorie shakes that would be great for situations like this, where you can drink a big glass of a shake and have it be about 600 calories.

Just to give you an example of what a shake might look like, I like to put in a blender some fruit.

I will buy frozen fruit. I’m kind of a mango fruit kind of guy. I like mangoes, cantaloupes, honeydews, those types of fruit.

I’ll buy the frozen bag of fruits and I’ll put in a lot of fruits but usually it’s about half the bag.

I put in half the bag and then I’ll usually put in a banana, and as a plus, bananas are good for potassium.

Then I will also add either some almond milk or some regular milk, depending on how I’m feeling and what flavor I want.

Then I’ll also add some oatmeal, like half a scoop of oatmeal.

And the nice thing about oatmeal is that it’s extremely carbohydrate rich, but it’s also a complex type of carbohydrate that is very good for you. Those are going to give you that long lasting, sustaining energy.

The nice thing about the shakes so far is that we have two forms of carbohydrates. We have the fruits, which are going to provide a quicker acting type of carbohydrate, that are going to be great for if you take the shake post run.

They’re going to be great for stimulation in sports. It’ll help your body absorb the nutrients. Your body needs those carbohydrates to recover.

It also has oatmeal which will give you long lasting energy to keep you going throughout the day, and keep the body sustained in recovery mode throughout the day.

So, that’s a really nice piece.

Now, what we also want to add is some protein and you can do it in a couple of different ways.

You could do something like a peanut butter. The nice thing about peanut butter is if you get the natural kind, you can get some nice healthy fats in there as well.

Personally, I like to use a whey protein and I will throw in a vanilla whey.

Usually, I’ll use one or two scoops, depending on the kind of protein needs I have for the day. One scoop of whey protein usually is about 20 to 25 grams of protein.

I’ll throw two in there, and that’s going to get me roughly 50 grams of protein.

If I don’t add milk, I’ll add some water and then ice, if I feel like making a little bit more of a slushy, than a pure drink. But then you can feel free to throw in any other stuff that you want.

I also like throwing in wheat germ. It’s a great way to add some vitamins and minerals. It doesn’t subtract anything from the taste and if I get unflavored wheat germ, I’ll thrown it in there as well.

Some other ideas that you can use, is, you can do Carnation Instant Breakfast. That is a great option that has some a good ratio of carbohydrates to proteins.

I’m basically describing to you my type of shakes here, but you can throw in the types of things that you want.

And if you keep track, you can say, “I’ll throw in two cups of fruit. A banana, two scoops of whey protein, one scoop of meal, and a cup of almond milk.”

You can add all those up and see exactly how many calories that is.

And if you don’t particularly your case, you can say, “Okay, well, it’s 500 calories.”

That shake won’t be 500 calories because you’d have to add a little bit of stuff in there. Peanut butter would be a great way to get the calories in.

But that allows you to basically say, “Okay, this shake is 500 calories,” and then you can use that and drink it.

Drinking is much easier.

If you’re really full, you can gulp it down or drink it throughout the day. You can drink half of it right after your run, and then sip it throughout the day.

It’s not going to make you feel full and it’s not something you have to think about, like stuffing your face and eating when you’re not hungry. So, that’s a really effective way to refuel without adding anything.

And then going along the same lines, that’s where recovery drinks can get really important.

One of our sponsors for the weekly podcast make a really great recovery drink and that’s Body Health, which makes a great amino acid product and Endurox, which is a four to one recovery ratio product.

Those are great to add in this as well.

Even if you can’t stomach or let’s say you’re on the run and you don’t have time to make a big shake, then you can definitely make sure that you’re getting a serving or two of a recovery product like an Endurox, like a Body Health.

Those are going to be super important for you.

You can either do two servings and make sure you get the protein and carbs in there, to help you recover. And by drinking it, it shouldn’t affect your hunger at all.

I hope that answered your question and gave you some good ideas about how you can refuel.

It is important, even if you’re not feeling hungry, to make sure that you’re meeting your calorie needs on those long runs and on those workout days.

It’s critical if you want to refuel and recover well.

Finally, let me mention today’s sponsor, who is Aftershokz Headphones. Now, one of the things that I always want to make sure that people do when they listen to our podcast, because I do say it’s one of the best podcast to listen to when you run, especially this daily podcast.

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Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. I hope you have the time to subscribe, which means that you can get updated every time that we release one of these episodes.

Thanks once again and have a great run today.

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