Do not get caught in the trap of thinking you can eat anything you like, because you can simply exercise to burn it off.
I have heard this time and time again. “I am going to be fine for Thanksgiving dinner. I’ll just run a few extra laps.”
Not that I think that running or exercising after overeating is a bad idea. It is not. It is a good idea. It is smart to burn extra calories and train to take advantage of the extra calories you consumed. But it can be fatal to assume you can consistently overeat and then fix it through training.
Let’s be realistic. A person who runs an incredibly intense 20-minute HIIT session may burn around 400 calories. That is fine if your splurge was limited to a few extra French fries or a typical Snickers bar. But when you consume a large plate of Italian pasta in a cream sauce loaded with sausage and then have that Cesar salad on the side with the buttered down rolls and finish it up with a chocolate mousse pie and espresso shot mixed with Kahlua, you may be in for a surprise. This meal, alone, can account for 1000 – 2000 calories due to the fat, alcohol, and carbohydrate content (there may be protein, too, but not as much as a bodybuilder would desire). So a simple 20 minutes hard on the treadmill, or even an hour going easy, just won’t cut it.
What is worse is that your body continuously adapts to your level of nutrition intake and exercise. Eventually, homeostasis will slow your metabolism. At this point, the only solution will be to eat less. Normally, you could increase exercise, too, but you are already overdoing it by continuously knocking out hours of cardio to overcompensate for meals that you could have simply controlled in the first place. Not a fun situation in which to be.
If you wish to track exactly how the foods that you consume and the exercise you perform relate to each other, take a free trial of the DietPower Nutrition Software. You can track your daily food intake, the exercise you perform, and even enter custom foods. There is also an incredible health encyclopedia built into the program. This is what I use to track meals and prepare for competitions or photo shoots.
The most sane approach to losing fat is to balance your nutrition and training. You do not necessarily have to weigh everything or count calories, but you need to be consistent. Whether you know a meal is 400 calories, or a cup of something, or a fist-sized portion of something, is irrelevant. What is relevant is that you have a consistent method of making that meal.
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This way, if you find you need to cut back in order to lose more, you can move to 300 calories or ¾ of a cup or just less than your fist size. Be consistent with your portions and you will be able to adjust them. Nutrition is by far the major component that determines success or failure for fat loss. So eat clean, most of the time, and try to allow yourself only occasional cheat meals. One meal a week should be fine, and then adding exercise to compensate is not necessarily a problem.
It is when you overeat every day that no amount of exercise is going to account for those additional calories. Probably the most important thing to consider is the mentality behind this. Regardless of the science, giving you the ability to “exercise off” the calories is just giving yourself an easy out, a backdoor, and an excuse. It is keeping you from truly committing to the lifestyle. In the back of your mind, you never truly have to learn to enjoy the new, healthy way of eating because you can always slip and burn it off.
It is exactly this thinking that can prevent you from succeeding at Point #1 — truly making a decision. So, don’t sell yourself short or give yourself any excuses. Forget the nonsense about burning it off. You are looking at it backwards. Instead of burning off the foods you eat, eat to fuel your body for the workouts you use to build a better body and burn off the unwanted fat. There is a cliché expression that describes this perfectly: Eat to live, do not live to eat.
