You Can’t Out Exercise a Bad Diet

You just finished a long grueling run. You are tired, but feel good that you have done it. You get out of the shower and you are ready to eat. What do you do next? You can go for pizza and ice cream, or you can go for grilled chicken and fruit for dessert. What are you going to choose? The answer to that question will help determine if you are losing weight or not in the long term - it depends on your goals as to what you choose.

Pizza is delicious. Cookies too. If you choose to eat those foods, then you’re likely enjoying them. By any measure though, these foods are not healthy. Sure, you can make healthier versions of both of these foods, but in the standard forms they are not great for you. That’s probably part of the reason that they taste so good. They’re loaded with sugar and fat that makes your body want more of them.

If you want to lose weight though, you’re going to have to look at your diet first, and then increase your workout intensity. You can work out for 4 hours straight and still gain weight. If you workout for 4 hours, you’re probably only burning an extra 1200 - 2000 calories above what you normally would. A lot of restaurants will have that many calories in a single meal - you’ve earned one extra meal for that four hours of work.

Most junk food will also blow through the number of calories you burn very quickly as well. Chips, cookies, ice cream, and so forth are delicious and not good for you at all - they are high calorie foods that simply don’t fill you up. They’re sweet and savory and after eating a little bit you simply want more. There’s a reason that you shouldn’t buy those items if you’re trying to lose weight - it’s too hard to do so.

Seriously, a handful of chips will take you roughly 30 minutes to burn off while working out. Having 3 to 4 handfuls of chips and you’re suddenly looking at nearly 2 hours of additional workouts to burn those calories and keep the weight off. There’s a reason that you’ll always hear that weight loss starts in the kitchen - that’s because it does. You need to eat right in order to lose weight.

While working out can help you lose weight to some degree, it’s not going to be the real way you do it. Fitness and working out is meant more to help keep your body healthy and strong, not to lose weight. Losing weight is done in the kitchen - working out helps to make you healthier and stronger. You’re not going to outwork a bad diet - you simply won’t have enough time or energy to do so.

Surprisingly, it actually doesn’t have to be a drastic change to help you lose weight. You need to start by removing the worst offenders in your diet - remove the foods that are considered junk food first. Things such as chips, soda, sweets, and so forth. Cut back on them slowly as you work to remove them as part of your diet. If you need, replace them with similar foods (i.e. diet soda) so that you don’t go right back to eating them.

You won’t outwork a bad diet. You need to fix the way that you eat in order to lose weight.