Today I wanted to discuss a common, mind boggling, issue. To quote a client “Great workout. Now I can eat that bacon cheese burger later!” If you have fallen into this trap before I don’t blame you. It can be all to easy to justify a bad habit with a good one. But there are far too many things wrong with this line of thinking to cover it all in one email. So I am going to talk about it purely from a caloric/math point of view with today’s information coming from Suppversity.
Issue #1
It’s commonly thought that to lose a pound of fat you need to burn 3,500kcal. This concept is fundamentally flawed. Learn more about whyhere.
Issue #2
Working harder and doing more repetitions does not always bring greater results when looking at the scale. Learn more about why here.
Issue #3
Exercising more is not going to increase your appetite. So no excuses. Learn more about why here.
So what does all of this mean?
Well basically when we are looking at weight loss, justifying your dietary decisions based on your exercise program is a poor choice. In fact exercise only makes up a small portion of you daily caloric expenditure as compared to the calories you burn just to stay alive. So at its core, the thought that the 300kcal that you burned during your gym session justifies the 800kcal bacon cheese burger (or insert you favorite junk food here), is fundamentally flawed. Now let me be clear here. It’s okay to live life and eat junk once in a while. But to regularly eat garbage because you exercised is a very poor way to go about achieving you goals. It may even make the scale move in the wrong direction.
What to do next.
Stick to your healthy eating habits. Don’t deviate away from being a healthy individual because you had a hard day pumping iron. Instead, you should stay consistent with your dietary goals even if you think you “deserve” more. The dark side (fast/junk food) will always be tempting, but achieving you ultimate goal will be so much more satisfying in the end. Finally, you need to stick with an exercise program you like, and try to incorporate both strength cardio training into your program.
For more information you can click on the links above or follow the link to the main article bellow. If you need help figuring out what the best course of action is for you, I am always here to help 🙂
All Me Fitness 