Ugh.  I ate so bad this weekend.  I’m gonna go and kill it at the gym to make up for it.

Oooh  I want to earn my dinner tonight…so I’m going extra hard at the gym.

My pants don’t fit so that means an extra 10 minutes on the deadmill

I gotta work this off!

Raise your hand if you’ve ever said one of the statements above.

LittleGirlRaisingherhand

Yep.  I’m guilty of saying those things as well.  It’s how we’ve been taught to view exercise.  It’s supposed to be tortuous, punishing, and unforgiving.  If we’re “bad” then we deserve extra punishment such as extra sets and extra minutes of work.

This mindset is what’s wrong with Fitness today.  Real (Functional) Athletes don’t train with the idea of punishing themselves.  When the great ones have a bad game, they don’t go and do extra drills or extra reps as punishment.  They do the extra drills and extra reps to GET BETTER.

Real Athletes have a COMPLETELY different mindset than people who want to look good in the mirror.  Their mindset is focused on getting better and improving each quarter, each game, and each season.  As a health and fitness coach my goal is for clients to improve incrementally: every workout, every week, every month, and every year.

That’s how you should view your own life:  Each day, week, month, and year improving incrementally so that the effects of aging are minimized.

Calories In Vs. Calories Out is killing us.

The paradigm that the Fitness Industry loves to promote for Fat Loss is why the Fat Loss Success rate is in the single digits.  More and More evidence is being brought to the forefront about how there is FAR MORE to the story than Calories in Vs. Calories Out.  There are factors such as: hormones, metabolic rate, and gut health that will determine someone’s ability to lose fat.

It is not as simple to say, ” I ate a 200 candy bar and so now I’m going to go onto the treadmill and burn off that 200 calories”.  That’s not how it works.  The calorie count on foods are just an estimate and everyone metabolizes and absorbs food differently.

How many calories you burn has to do with your own personal metabolic rate.  There’s no guarantee that you’ve burned 200 calories during your workout…especially if you’re a yo-yo dieter.  Yo-yo dieters have slower metabolisms because when you lose weight, then you lower your metabolism and after you inevitably gain weight (the rebound) you will still burn less calories which is why as a yo-yo dieter you put on MORE weight.

Putting your weight and age into the machine is just giving you an ESTIMATE of how many calories you are burning.  It’s not an exact science…even with a HR Monitor.

Thermostat not a calculator

Your metabolism isn’t a calculator.  You want to think of your metabolism as a thermostat running either hot or cold.  A slower metabolism is on the cold side…you aren’t going to burn many calories. A faster metabolism is on the hot side…you will burn more calories.

By understanding this concept, we start to see why treating exercise as an antidote to food will prove futile.

You don’t burn nearly as many calories as you think you do during exercise

You can’t out train a bad diet

No you can’t and I’ve read more than one piece of research that says people overestimate the effect exercise has on Fat Loss.  I believe Nutrition and Hormonal Function are your most vital components.

When you think you’re EARNING that 1500 meal, you’re most likely not. I’ve read estimates that people burn about 300-500 calories during an actual workout.  Of course you want to burn calories after a workout which comes from strength training and High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) but We must get out of the mindset that because you work out, then you can eat more.

There will be Holidays and There will Be BBQs…ENJOY AND MOVE ON

After a holiday or the weekend, it’s normal to see the posts about how people indulged and now they’re off to burn 10,000 calories during a mega workout.

There will be Holidays, Special Occasions, and BBQ’s.  Get over it.

The idea is for you to be metabolically healthy so you can enjoy such things and move on.  If you make choices that consistently promote your health such as:

  • Eating Real Food
  • Drinking Water
  • Minimizing Sugar
  • Minimizing Alcohol Intake
  • Eating Breakfast with a significant amount of protein
  • Getting plenty of sleep
  • Managing stress levels

One or two days of enjoying some fun treats won’t be your undoing.  In fact, if you get your metabolism functioning at an optimal level you can use these treats to your advantage.  That’s a tool of the bodybuilding community.  They will use “cheat meals” to cause the metabolism to crank it up and burn more calories.  It’s not uncommon for people to drop fat following a planned cheat meal.  I’ve seen it happen with clients who go away on vacation, enjoy some treats, and are surprised to find they didn’t gain anything but saw a drop.

STOP PUNISHING YOURSELF

You don’t need to do an extra hard workout because you ate a piece of cake.  If we strip it down, then what you’re really doing is punishing yourself for eating something “bad”.  This is setting the foundation for a disordered relationship with food.

While we are at it: Please stop referring to exercise as an exercise in self destruction.  STIMULATE DON’T ANNIHILATE.  It may seem as if it’s a trivial point but it’s not.  A person who is self loathing wants to inflict punishment on themselves for not being enough and speaks words that sound like they are inflicting war on themselves.  End the war on yourself!

Excessive Exercise leads to injury and over time you will see your improvements start to regress.  Your joints, tendons, ligaments, and muscles can only take so much over time.  Be in it for the long haul.  Stimulate don’t Annihilate.

Remember  A person who is kind themselves will speak in terms that empower rather than punish. You like to feel strong, powerful, and energetic.

Why do you exercise?

A great way to check your mindset to see if you look at exercise is punishment is to ask yourself why you exercise.

Is it because you want to feel good?

Is it because you want to be able to your enjoy your life?

Is it because you’re afraid to get fat?

Is it because you think if you look different people would like you more?

I’m going to be honest with you.  I am feeling like myself again.  I am able to teach classes again without getting tired.  I have energy throughout the day.  My strength is back.  I was injured last year because I got away from my own training philosophies and after getting back on track with that, I am pain free. Best of all my hormones are back in check…yet my weight is still about 20 pounds from where I started over 2 years ago and 15 pounds from where I was last year.  You can keep those 15 pounds if it meant feeling like hot garbage again.

Best of all…I enjoy exercise again.  I like going and doing something good for myself.  I like seeing the improvements in my strength, conditioning, and my energy levels.  My mentality is like that of a REAL ATHLETE.  It’s Function over looks.  I’m focused on FUNCTIONING better.  I encourage you to stop looking at exercise as a punishment and to start looking at it as the training grounds for  Living a Better Life.