There is a saying, ‘you can’t out-train a bad diet’ and in most cases, it’s so true. Why is this? Simple:
Calories in = quick (you can eat a lot in a short amount of time!)
Calories out = slow (you usually have to exercise for a while to work it all off)
A good night out (but not so good for the diet!)
Let’s look at one of the ‘bottle-necks’ a lot of people struggle with – a night out on the weekend. You may have trained your butt off and eaten well all week – only to blow it all in one night.
Take for example a typical ‘good night out’:
3 glasses wine – 360 calories
Entree or dessert- 400-500 calories+
Main – 600-700 calories+
Two cocktails – 520 calories+
Greasy kebab or an easy burger on the way home (?!) = 1006
Total calories consumed = 3,000+ calories (for an average woman, this should be closer to 2,000 to maintain weight, give or take a bit depending on age, level of physical activity among other things).
Ok, so this is an extreme example, but it happens. We justify it by saying that we’ve been to the gym all week, or that we’ve danced it off. Well, if you could dance it off, you’d be in the club til at least Tuesday to get rid of that many calories! Well maybe not quite Tuesday, but you would need to do around 10 hours of high intensity dancing.
The weight loss equation
Think about how hard you need to exercise to get rid of excess calories – half an hour of non-stop running burns around 300 calories. 300 calories can easily be eaten in just a few minutes. Have you got time to do 10x half hour runs in your week – on TOP of the cardio you are doing already just to get you back to where you started? Yeah it doesn’t seem fair, but it’s the unfortunate reality.
Of course, having a night out like that truly as a one off – like once every month or two isn’t going to have much affect on your results. But if you are blowing your calories up every week, it may be the bottle-neck that is halting the progress you so desperately want.
It can be a real eye-opener to be very honest as to how much is going in on these ‘one off’ occasions, and actually ask yourself how often these one off’s are really one off’s.
Has the weekend ruined your diet?
Many people get frustrated and are almost in tears when the scale doesn’t budge and they’ve been going hell for leather at the gym all week. To make matters worse, if you happen to weigh on a Monday or Tuesday after your body has pulled in loads of water from all the terrible food on the weekend, you’ve probably ballooned. Not fun.
If you are serious about dropping weight, you need to make a choice and plan how many of these types of indulgences you can get away with and how hard you’re prepared to work to get rid of the excess calories.
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