The verdict is in – it’s easier to eat than to workout. You’re probably aware of that already? You can’t deny that working out to lose weight takes quite a bit of effort and motivation.
And that explains why most people are overweight instead of walking around looking like Greek gods and goddesses.
This concept of eating too much of the wrong food while working out, and still not losing weight seems to fly over the head of many people struggling with their diets.
Working Out To Lose Weight Is Hard
The biggest mistake these people (you too, if you’re working out and not losing weight) is overestimating how many calories they’re burning when they exercise.
This is perfectly understandable because we all know just how excruciatingly difficult it can be to just to exercise regularly, right? And that doesn’t even take into consideration the pain of working out, and the sore muscles afterwards?
Does Exercise Burn Calories
Comparing the calories burned to how quick you can destroy your workout with the wrong food is where the success or failure rate comes into play.
If you run for 60 minutes, you can actually burn close to 590 calories.
Wow! That’s a lot of calories, right?
You can really feel proud of yourself after that run. How you’ve stuck to your weight loss goals, took the action, got up and ran for an hour.
However, (pay attention – here it comes) within an hour of feeling good about your exercise, you’re at the Subway sandwich shop, thinking:
“Hmm! I’ve worked my butt off. I can eat a cookie or two. It won’t hurt.”
So, you buy two cookies and nibble on them like a hungry hamster on your drive home.
What you probably didn’t realize was that both cookies contained about 400 calories and 18 grams of fat.
Now compare that to the 590 calories you just spent an hour sweating off in your exercise program.
By the time you reach home feeling satisfied with your belly full of cookies, and still feeling pretty good about your workout — you’ve undone most of your progress.
Those two harmless ‘cookies’ you ate just cancelled out your sweat-drenching workout which took an entire hour to complete.
To add insult to the injury, it probably only took you 10 minutes at most to wolf down those cookies.
This mistake plays out repeatedly, millions of times all over the world every single day.
Working out to lose weight only works if you’re doing something about the food and eating habits that caused you be overweight.
Yes, it’s really that serious… and it’s not just cookies.
Every single day, millions of people try to lose weight and do all the necessary physical actions.
They workout at the gym, they do cardio, indulge in lifting weights for resistance training, they do aerobics, and whatever else you could think of.
They give it their all and act on their goals…
But, it’s easy to forget and simply neglect the fact that a couple of cookies can quickly undo all their weight loss efforts.
We all know the hard truth that it’s far more difficult to burn off the calories with exercise than to consume them.
It may not seem fair – and quite frankly it isn’t.
After all, you really struggled to burn those 500 calories, right? Yep… but that’s the way it is.
You need to sear this fact into your brain – eating the wrong foods will hamper your progress when you’re working out and trying to lose weight with your efforts.
How to Stay on Track With Weight Loss Goals
You need to stay on track with your workouts without giving into cravings for about 4 – 5 days and then indulge in some of your favorite foods on the 5th or 6th day.
This will give you a mental break from all the discipline required to lose weight and stick to your exercise routines.
Even on your ‘cheat day’ though, you should do your best to not go crazy with your eating.
Try to consume those sweets and other junk foods that put the weight on to start with as much moderation as possible.
Ideally, when you are trying to lose weight, you try to build your diet around this order:
- 10-30% carbohydrates
- 40-50% protein
- 30-40% fat
If your carbs are on the lower end of the scale, you’ll lose more weight.
Always remember that losing weight takes more than working out.
Without doing something about your diet, you probably can’t work out enough to overcome bad eating habits.
If you dial in your diet along with your exercise, you WILL lose weight.
Relying only on workouts to lose weight is a common mistake I see people make.
When you’re working out you are boosting your metabolic rate, burning calories, and building muscle to burn even more calories.
It’s your diet and caloric deficit that will determine if you lose weight or not.
Abs are made in the kitchen.
What you eat in private, you’ll wear in public.
So, don’t waste your workouts and watch your food closely to lose weight.