Exercise and Appetite

Exercise and Appetite: A Weight Loss Tip and a Chicken Recipe for Dinner tonight.

 

If you exercise more, you're going to eat more, right? Not so fast.
According to a new study, adding more exercise to your life will indeed rev up your premeal appetite. But here's the cool news: You may find yourself getting full faster, so you end up eating less.

Flex Your Appetite
When overweight men and women burned an extra 500 calories a day through exercise as part of a small study, some interesting things happened to their appetites. After 12 weeks of working out, participants said their before-breakfast hunger was greater than it had been prior to the study. But they agreed that the same breakfast felt more filling than it did before they had started exercising. And the group continued to feel quite satiated for several hours after eating. Sounds like a little extra exercise may be a great way to avoid snack attacks! 


Four simple rules could turn your breakfast into a cravings crusher, pound shedder, and mood booster.

One, Two, Three, Four . . .
Here are four simple rules for using breakfast to counterbalance the biochemical mechanisms behind sugar cravings, obesity, and depression. 

Do it daily. Your goal is to make it a daily, automatic habit. The reward? You can kiss late-day low blood sugar and sugary snack cravings goodbye -- permanently. 

Do it sooner rather than later. For the best results, eat breakfast within an hour or so of waking up -- even if you're not hungry. Morning-time low blood sugar produces a brain chemical designed to mask hunger pangs -- but can cause sugar cravings later in the day. 

Make it complex. We're talking complex carbohydrates here (whole-grain cereals, steel-cut oats, high-fiber fruits, etc.) The fiber keeps blood sugar on an even keel and helps you feel full longer. 

Power it with protein. Protein slows digestion, helps prevent spikes and dips in blood sugar, and can even give you a dose of depression-fighting tryptophan. DesMaisons recommends that you get a third of your daily protein at breakfast.

Exercise Effects
Researchers aren't sure why working out seemed to have opposing effects on appetite, but it's encouraging to think it might help us do a better job of telling ourselves when we're full. Of course, whether you run marathons or walk around the block, you still need to listen to your body and judge your hunger realistically. No matter how many calories you've burned, force yourself to eat slowly and stop shoveling when you feel about 80 percent full. That will give the last bit of food time to really hit your stomach. 




WHAT’S FOR DINNER TONIGHT

Here is an idea for a healthy dinner tonight !!

 Chicken under a Brick with Rapini

Prep Time:

20 mins

Total Time:

1 hr

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS

• 1 3-pound chicken
• 10 sage leaves
• 7 sprigs rosemary
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 lemon
• 3 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
• Extra virgin olive oil
• 1-2 bunches of broccoli rabe, stems trimmed, large leaves discarded

Directions

Butterfly the chicken by cutting out the back with kitchen shears. 

Lay the chicken on a clean work surface, skin-side down. Using your fingers, free the bone that separates the two breasts.

Lift the bone out and discard it.
Coarsely chop sage and rosemary. 

Using your fingers, gently loosen the chicken skin from the breasts; Rub salt and pepper and a little of the chopped herbs onto the breasts, under the skin. 

Slice the peel from the lemon and cut it into large pieces; reserve the peeled lemon. 

Scatter about a half of the chopped herbs and lemon on a large piece of plastic wrap. 

Add about a third of the sliced garlic. Lay the chicken, skin-side down, on the herbs and seasonings. 

Scatter the remaining herbs and lemon and about half of the remaining garlic (the rest will be used to flavor the rapini) over the chicken. 

Season the exposed side of the bird with salt and pepper, then season with a little olive oil. 

Wrap the chicken in the plastic and allow it to marinate for at least an hour, but better yet over night. 

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. 

Unwrap the chicken and pick off the herbs and pieces of lemon peel. 

Season the skin side well with salt and pepper. 

Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil.
Place the chicken in the skillet, skin-side down. 

Flatten it with a heavy weight, a brick wrapped in tin foil works perfectly. 

Cook the chicken until the skin begins to color, about 45 seconds. 

Transfer the chicken to the oven and continue cooking until the thigh juices run clear, begin checking after 25 minutes but expect the chicken to take about 10 minutes longer. 

Remove the chicken from the pan and allow it to rest in a warm place for about 5 minutes. 

Reserve the skillet with the pan juices. 

While the chicken is cooking blanch the rapini in boiling salted water for about 3 minutes, then drain.

When the chicken is done and resting, heat the pan juices on the stove over medium high heat.

Add the reserved garlic to the pan and cook until it is fragrant and beginning to color, about 2 minutes.

Add the blanched rapini and cook, turning it in the pan juices, until it is tender, about 2 minutes.

Season the rapini with salt, pepper and a squeeze of of lemon juice then transfer it to a serving dish. Serve the chicken over the rapini.