FORGOTTEN FAT-LOSS KEY #1: CALORIES COUNT MORE THAN EXERCISE Let’s be perfectly clear here: when it comes to fat loss, calories count. Big time. Yes, you’ve heard this before. You’ve heard this 10,000 times before - from Oprah, Dr. Oz, your significant other, and your best friend’s cousin’s mom’s personal trainer. Everyone says the same thing, so why do you feel like the lone exception in all of human history that it doesn’t apply to? Habits are indeed hard to break, and it could be argued that changing what you eat and drink on a daily basis are the hardest ones of all, but as renowned strength coach and co-author of the bestselling book The New Rules for Life, Alwyn Cosgrove, has repeatedly stated, “You’ll never out-train a poor diet.” There’s no magic pill – or training regimen – that’s going to compensate for, let alone trump, a lackluster approach to what you eat. In order to burn body fat, it’s hugely important to elicit some sort of caloric deficit – calories in must be less than calories out – either through diet, exercise, or a combination of the two. Exercise can make this problem worse. How? As soon as they decide they want to lose fat, many people are quick to chase after the latest fitness craze in an effort to finally get into their “skinny” jeans (or someone else’s). Sound familiar? Well, doing super-duper-red-hot-naked-metabolic-yoga-insanity-pilates-extreme won’t really matter much if you’re the type of person who hightails it to your local Starbucks after every training session to order a Frappuccino the size of Mini Cooper. Here’s the truth: When it comes to creating a caloric deficit, which in turn leads to increased fat loss, diet plays a much larger role compared to exercise. While the exact number varies depending on whom you ask, for simplicity sake let’s embrace the commonly held notion that one pound of fat equates to 3500 of excess calories ingested. Then let’s say you’re trying to cut 500 calories per day to lose a pound of fat in one week. If you’re really pushing yourself hard in the gym, it generally takes 45-60 minutes of vigorous, your-heart-is-going-to-explode exercise to burn off 500 calories. Compare that effort to what it takes to not eat that Snickers bar you typically have as a mid-afternoon snack, or maybe nixing nightly cocktails, or passing on a pit stop at McDonalds. What is a better use of your time: 60 minutes of gym-base masochism, or simply not eating those 500 calories you don’t need each day? Exactly. It doesn’t matter how many days per week you work out, nor how hard you work out, or even how long you work out; when it comes to the battle of the bulge, your day-to-day nutrition is going to be the “x” factor. It’s as simple as that.
Posted on: Fri, 20 Sep 2013 23:00:02 +0000
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