Out Exercise a Bad Diet
Ever heard someone give themselves permission to indulge their sweet tooth just because they just had a great workout? It’s a common excuse. Many people believe that because they exercise, they’re in the black when looking at their calorie input vs. calorie output. However you can not out exercise a bad diet so this type of thinking is a sure road to failure. Most people with a lean body and a 6 pack didn’t get that way by rationalizing their way to the dessert buffet.
Many people have no idea how many calories they take in on an average day, often severely underestimating when asked to take a guess at it. Similarly, they also overestimate the number of calories they burn during exercise. The truth is that 30 minutes of the best circuit training class in town will not cancel out that burger and fries!
Do the Math
Let’s look at the hard numbers. If an average, moderately intensive workout burns as much as 300 – 400 calories in an hour, but on the way home from fitness class, you decide to grab a couple of donuts from Dunkin’ Donuts. After all, you’ve earned it, right? In the 3 minutes it will take you to put away two chocolate frosted cake donuts, you’ve consumed 720 calories. All your hard work is wasted, plus you’ve provided your body with several hundred extra calories to store as fat!
Or maybe you decide to have pizza and soda with friends. You consider the 600 calories you burned running on the treadmill for an hour today, so you eat 4 pieces of pizza and a coke. No problem, right?
Wrong. You just downed 900 – 1,000 calories in about 10 minutes!
Is it really worth it?
Face the Facts
The bottom line is you simply can not out exercise a bad diet. If you try to spar a bad diet with exercise, the exercise will lose every single time. The only way to lose weight and get that lean, sexy, healthy body that looks great in anything (or nothing) is to eat a healthy diet AND exercise.
Your weight loss is driven by diet and maintained by exercise. To get ahead in the calorie game is to eat fewer calories than you burn. Only then will you begin to see the fat melt away. Exercise builds muscle and can rev up your metabolism, but you won’t lose weight if you continually eat more than you can metabolize.
This is not to say that exercise is not important. It is! In fact, according to Barry Braun, associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst,
“When you look at the results in the National Weight Control Registry, you see over and over that exercise is one constant among people who’ve maintained their weight loss.” 1
Want to keep the pounds off? Exercise! Exercise is crucial. And you must combine it with a balanced diet if you want to shed pounds.
Start Smart
Have you been trying to out exercise your diet? It’s time to rethink your weight loss strategy. Try the following tips to start fresh and recreate your body!
- Plan, plan, plan. The only way you are going to get control of your diet is to plan ahead. Do not let yourself get hungry with nothing healthy prepared to eat; your willpower will plummet and you will reach for a snack that will set you back. Keep food ready in your refrigerator that you can grab and heat quickly. And don’t leave the house without cool water and a meal-to-go.
- Lift weights. When you start losing weight, you must protect your muscle. If you begin to lose pounds without adding in weight lifting, you will likely lose up to 25% of your muscle mass. Also, after an intense weight lifting workout targeting at least 3 big muscles, your metabolism increases for up to 39 hours after you are finished. And repairing that muscle tissue after lifting requires energy! Energy=calories burned.
- Most people need an accountability partner. Often times, the single biggest determiner of your fitness success is whether or not you have one. Find someone to trade food journals with and report on how you are doing with your willpower. Or, work with a trainer who won’t let you cheat and who will always give you honest feedback.
You need both exercise and a healthy diet to be lean, strong and healthy. Don’t neglect either one and you will be on the path to success!
1http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/magazine/18exercise-t.html?pagewanted=1
