It happens every Monday…The treadmills are filled up with those attending “cardio confessional” after a weekend of gorging on a bad diet and falling off the wagon. Unfortunately, their efforts to try to out train a bad diet won’t help because the fat storage hormones have already come and gone.
Eat to fuel your workout, don’t workout to attempt to undo what you ate
A bad diet can’t be undone with a workout.
We often take the mindset that we are burning up the calories that we took in over the weekend but the truth of the matter is that many of the cardio machines you see at the gym over estimate calorie burn by 40%. That can quickly add up (or, not add up) and throw your calorie counting efforts of balance as well as the scale…You simply can’t out train a bad diet and here’s why:
Now, while calories are part of the equation (SEE:Calorie Counting Exposed ) hormones play an even bigger roll. When you eat sugary, processed, packaged foods that are high in trans fats (read: fast food, sugar laden foods, starchy carbs, pastries, chips…) and hope to go to the gym to “work it off” it might work to make your mind feel better but these foods create bigger issues than an excess of calories:
1) Eating these foods causes hormonal disregulation that will cause the fat burning doors to shut down for several hours after the meal.
2) These processed foods mentioned above are not recognized well by the body and create a stress response. The fat storage hormone called cortisol is produced. Cortisol tends to cause us to store more fat in the belly
3) Many of these foods contain sugars and starchy carbohydrates. Insulin, another fat storage hormone, comes on the scene to remove the sugars from the bloodstream. The presence of Insulin causes fat burning to be shut down for about 3 hours after a sugary or starchy meal
Eating a bad diet trains the body to be a sugar burner rather than a fat burner. While you can try to burn off the calories you took in during a binge session, there is nothing you can do about the hormones that created a fat storage environment…Not what we are aiming for!
There are several hormones that come into play when we eat. Each hormone sends a message to the body to either burn fat or store it. This means that no matter what kind of exercise you do to repent for your food choices, those hormones have already sprung into action …This can’t be undone until the next meal.
To add insult to injury, when we overeat repeatedly, the hormone responsible for telling our brain that we are full begins to rebel as a result of being unheard time and time again. This condition, called leptin resistance, can take some time to reverse…much more time that one session on the elliptical machine.
The biggest factor in regulating these particular hormones is food, not exercise.
Our focus should be put toward eating to fuel our activity rather than working out to compensate for what you ate in a weak moment. On less active days eat a little less, on more active days eat a little more…consider your gym time bonus.
These days we are so busy that is hard to find time to get a workout in. If you take a moment to think about it, it takes a lot less time to put the proper foods in your mouth than it does to pack up and hit the gym for another hour long cardio session. Not to mention this is not the best approach for fat loss… See: Are you burning muscle?)
Are you ready to jump into a plan that will help you burn fat while eating delicious foods? I am ready to help you!
Not ready for a challenge yet but want to know more? I have created a free list of foods to choose from the next time you head to the grocery store. Don’t wander the aisles in frustration any more. Go forth with bold confidence and my cheat sheet 🙂 Grab it here:
Click Here to Subscribe
