Common Fitness Misconception #1: You can out-train a poor diet

"Can you out-train a poor diet?" If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me that question...well, you know the rest! I'll be the first to admit that I once believed that exercise--particularly lots and lots of cardio--was my "get out of jail free card" when I overindulged. I believed that it was as simple as "calories in, calories out," and therefore all I had to do to counteract a binge was to get on the treadmill or elliptical until my heart monitor reading reflected a number high enough to put me in a calorie deficit. Yay! I'd discovered The Secret to Staying Fit While Eating Copies Amounts of Bad, Nutrient-Deficient Food!

Umm, not so much.

Needless to say, it took me a long time to admit that my regimen was not bringing me closer to my fat loss goals. I didn't understand how the quality of my food could matter so much, or why I was spending so much time doing cardio and not seeing the results I wanted. My discovery of strength training coincided with the realization that I would have to clean up my diet and my portions...and needless to say, the rest is history.

So what is a poor diet? Ask 100 people and they'd like give 100 different answers, but for the purposes of this blog post, a poor diet either includes too many nutrient-deficient foods or too much of any type of food. Both poor diets will derail aesthetic goals, but a diet high in nutrient-deficient foods can be particularly insidious for the following reason: "the bad stuff," or junk food, is full of empty calories. In other words, there is very little by way of nutrients in a bag of chips or a Little Debbie snack pack that your body can absorb and use to fuel cellular function. The fewer nutrients there are to absorb, the less satisfied you are and the more you want to eat. In other words: empty calories (less nutritional value per calorie)=less nutrient absorption=less satisfaction=more hunger=more calories (from "the bad stuff") consumed.

Don't be fooled, however: a diet of too many/too much whole foods can be detrimental to achieving your aesthetic goals, as well. People who are active tend to overestimate how much food their bodies need and overeat as a result. I am certainly guilty of this, which is why portion control and mindful eating are important habits to practice. Things like not eating in front of the TV, eating with others whenever possible, using a food scale, and counting macronutrients can be very beneficial when one has a particular aesthetic goal in mind.

In my personal experience, the default compensation for an overindulgence was cardio, cardio, and more cardio. I approached cardio exercise as a necessary evil to rid my body of those excess calories that I didn't want to see on my hips or thighs. What I didn't realize was that when we burn calories through endless cardio, we're not just burning calories from fat: we're mostly burning sugar because it's the most easily-accessible fuel for our muscles during exercise.  Have you ever wondered why some folks who participate in endurance events don't have "ideal" physiques? How is it possible that these athletes who are doing hours and hours of cardio per week are overweight, bulky, and look rather unhealthy? This question confounded me until I read a little more about the science behind this phenomenon and it all started to make sense...

It's actually very easy to do moderate, cardiovascular exercise for such prolonged periods of time because our body doesn't have to work that hard to access the sugar to burn. I read a blog post by Jen Comas Keck recently that wisely compared a body that engages in lots of cardio as a fuel efficient car: just like a fuel efficient car conserves energy by using little fuel, bodies that do lots of cardio all the time get better and better at using less "gas" to fuel workouts. In other words, bodies that are used to lots of cardio are conditioned to burn less (calories, FAT, etc.) and conserve more to protect the internal organs from being starved.

Now get a load of this: if endless cardio tricks our bodies into thinking they're in starvation mode, imagine how our cells rejoice when we step off the treadmill and voila! We recover, our heart rates return to normal, and BAM! Hunger strikes. Like, mad, mad, ferocious hunger. And we justify that gigantic sandwich, half a pizza pie, burger with all the fixings, giant piece of chocolate cake, etc. by saying to ourselves "You just slogged away for an hour on [enter cardio machine of choice here] and burned 800 calories! You DESERVE this!" The more cardio we do, the more we're tricking our bodies into holding onto body fat, so the more cardio we do to lose that body, and the hungrier we feel. I'm telling you: this constant game of checks and balances between calories consumed and calories burned is a game we cannot win.

So we've examined how it's really damn hard, if not impossible, to out-train a poor diet with traditional cardio exercise. What about strength training or HIIT? Is it possible to out-CrossFit a poor diet?! Methinks the answer is no, but not for the same reasons why traditional cardio tends to derail aesthetic pursuits. That's because of this simple fact: more training of one kind is not better than SMART training of any kind. Strength training is a wonderful fat-loss tool because it boosts anabolic hormones that encourage muscle growth. The more muscle you have, the more efficient your metabolism, and the easier it is to burn fat and get that lean, toned look. However, if you overdo the strength training to compensate for a poor diet, you are not doing yourself any favors because that can lead to adrenal fatigue and other conditions that disrupt your hormones. If you're exhausted from lifting sessions, you also put yourself at greater risk of injury. Who wants to drop a 12-kg kettlebell on their foot?! Not me, sir.

I have another, less-scientific theory for why over-training of any kind is a bad weight loss tool: overeating--at least for those of us who have issues about food and nutrition and training and aesthetics--triggers emotions that elevate stress hormones. Training in such a state is detrimental, as cortisol (the stress hormone), which in certain amounts encourages muscle growth, can discourage muscle growth in a high-stress environment. Cortisol can actually turn off its muscle-building properties and turn on its muscle-eating properties, depending on your emotional-mental-physical state! In other words, your brain could be programming your body to hold onto muscle and build more, or literally eat the muscle tissue and replace it with fat. Umm, no thanks.

In my experience, although it's really hard, the best thing to do when you've overindulged is actually run AWAY from the gym. Actually, it's to not run at all, but walk, leisurely, and take it easy. Read, journal, do yoga, meditate, take some time to reflect after an overindulgence instead of forcing your body to train. Check in with yourself and try to get to the bottom of why you're eating poorly. Reach out to a friend or family member who will be supportive. Find a community of like-minded individuals to spend time with. Be kind to yourself, and above all know that training should support your healthy lifestyle; it should not be the center of it.