Why You Can’t Outrun A Bad Diet
You can’t outrun a bad diet.
Oh, but you think you can, huh?!
Well, are you a world class sprinter the likes of Usain Bolt? What about a superhuman speedster in the company of Barry Allen, someone you’re now scrambling to Google because you don’t know who the fuck that is?
Nah, of course you’re not!
You’re just an average person.1Waaaaayyyy, waaaaayyyy average at best, but let’s just leave that alone. But even if you were special, you still wouldn’t be able to outrun a bad diet for two reasons you should be *ahem* racing to find out…
You have a gym membership and you’ve possibly used it once, twice, dare I even push it and say maybe more than that!
That’s enough, right? You get your fair share of physical activity. What else is there?
As hard as you may want to pat yourself on the back, don’t dislocate your shoulder doing so quite yet because, in the grand scheme of things, if you haven’t paired your workout regimen with a sound meal plan then you haven’t really done shit to accomplish whatever the fuck it is you’re trying to accomplish.
You see, there’s more to fitness than just working out.
Everyone thinks going to the gym is all there is but there’s also food preparation and the eating of it, which falls under this itty-bitty thing called nutrition.
It’s this itty-bitty thing called nutrition that accounts for more of your success or failure than training can ever account for simply by virtue of time and what a proper diet can, or an improper diet can’t, do for you.
How best can I explain…
Hmmmm…
*tap my fingers*
*tap my fingers*
Sorry, but I’m still thinking how best to explain the importance of food in the least confusing way possible.
Now, if only there were a way to do that so everyone could understand real easy-peasy like.
Hmmmm…
*hmmmm some more*
EUREKA!
I can tell you why you can’t outrun a bad diet…
…with simple arithmetic!!!
After all, when has math ever made things more confusing rather than clearer? So what on earth could possibly go wrong here…
*ahem*
Let’s severely stretch our imagination and say you’re the overachieving gym rat who’s “dedicated” as hell. You display this “dedication” in the most intuitive way: by completely overdoing it.
What does that mean?
Well, you make it to the gym 7 days per week for 3 hours a pop.
Once tallied, that amounts to you busting your hump 21 hours a week on the cardio deck, or in the weight room, or a combination of both. That leaves you outside of the gym for a whopping 147 hours out of a possible 168. This is a seriously extreme example but it effectively shows that the amount of time spent in the gym as opposed to outside of it is a tiny sliver, even for the most “dedicated” of us.
Alright. Duh, you spend way more time away from the gym than in it! So freakin’ what?!?!
Well, let’s say that you buy lunch at work or stop off to grab something on your way home. Your fast food restaurant of choice is Wendy’s, from where you order a Baconator, 6-piece spicy chicken nuggets, large fries, a small frosty, and medium Diet Coke. That’s a 2,080 calorie meal that puts you a couple hundred, if not one or two thousand, calories over the caloric deficit you should eat to lose weight. What that means is even with you training for 3 hours, depending on how far over your caloric needs you are, you need another 1 to 3 hours just to burn off that meal so you don’t gain additional weight. That comes out to 3 to 6 hours spent working out BEFORE you even start burning off the calories needed to make a dent in your body fat percentage!
Multiplying that single day by seven should be enough for you to see the amount of work required to counteract gluttonous behavior on a daily basis.
This is exactly why that time outside of the gym is of great importance to you, or should be, because when, where, and how are you going to burn those calories that you’re eating in excess day in and day out?
Huh? I really wanna know!!!
So the solution?
Ummmmmmmm…rather than eating craploads of crap during your crapload of time away from the gym, make moderation a part of your vocabulary. Being that it takes zero time to not put something in your mouth that places you over your caloric needs whereas it takes several minutes to eat hundreds of calories and then hours of intense exercise to burn those calories off, controlling your inner fatty is the best bet. But then again, that might just be my laziness talking!
Now, let’s move on to the next reason why you can’t outrun a bad diet.
Upon reading the last section, you probably think it’s sayonara to stopping off at Wendy’s.
Before the tears come streaming down, you’ll be happy to hear that you don’t have to say goodbye!2I know, they’re the hardest!
Weight loss is still achievable via a steady diet of low quality food because it’s really not about what you eat but how much. As displayed by the flexible eating approach known as If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM), you’ll still lose fat no matter how poor the food choice is so long as your macronutrient totals align with your daily requirements, which in sum correspond with your caloric intake, basically making IIFYM about moderation like virtually any sound diet plan.
Now, while it is indeed true that you can alter your physique with crappy food because it’s a matter of calories in versus calories out, there’s a very good reason why you can’t outrun this part of your diet either.
Hmmmm…
How best can I explain?
Why, with another example, of course!
It’s pretend time…again!
Okay, let’s stretch our imagination even further than before and suppose that your broke ass can afford a brand spanking new Bentley Bentayga.
Yeah, I know, we’re pushing the boundaries of our imagination to the outer limits but bear with me.
Now, as the proud owner of a high-end luxury vehicle, you’re not going to put generic motor oil into it when its specifications call for premium synthetic. And if you do, you shouldn’t act surprised when the car’s performance is nowhere near what it’s supposed to be!!! Instead, because a Bentley Bentayga is a top of the line automobile, you have to supply it with top of the line fuel. None of that cheap stuff!
The human body is the exact same way: it’s a machine that will still operate when supplied with junk — much like a luxury car will when regular oil is used — but it runs at peak condition when supplied with the appropriate fuel. Heavily processed foods are not the body’s fuel of choice. They’re deficient in micronutrients (i.e. vitamins and minerals) and operating the body’s machinery on them alone adversely affects energy levels, immune health, cognitive performance, and mood — all of which impact your time in the gym by robbing you of the ability to go into Super Saiyan God mode and push through a tough workout. A diet poor in micronutrients may also keep you away from the gym altogether due to tiredness, injury, sickness, or lack of drive.
So the solution?
Ummmmmmmm…you should view those seconds, minutes, and hours away from the gym as precious opportunities to not only provide your body with the necessary fuel needed by it to perform its essential functions but to also perform optimally in meeting the added demands placed on it by you introducing it to stressors (e.g. weight, sets, reps, tempo, time under tension, rest periods) and it having to repair itself and make the desired adaptations — such as you pushing past that rep you failed at last session, your biceps growing an extra inch, you losing more fat than the previous weigh-in, blah.
To do this, exercise some discipline by having the bulk of your diet come from unprocessed, unrefined, and nutrient-rich sources, such as grains, beans, fruits and vegetables, and meat, fish, and dairy goods. These plant- and animal-based products are commonly referred to as whole foods, and they can be purchased from upscale grocers like the organic food emporium of the same name or its more affordable rival, Trader Joe’s. But don’t strap on your Birkenstocks just yet because, dare I say it, your local A&P, Piggly Wiggly, and other conventional supermarkets also sell that shit — just to varying degrees and they’re not pretentious about it!
All of this is why you can’t outrun a bad diet.
But wanna know who wants you to think you can?3Well, I mean besides you, as you want to try to outrun your bad diet so you don’t have to stop eating so fucking much.
Junk food companies, that’s who!
They want you to believe that you can continue eating their products as much as you like and that they’ll fuel you properly on par with whole food. And why would they want you to think such a thing? I’ll tell you with one hyphenated sound effect: CHA-CHING!!! Yeah, they tell you such lies so they can remain profitable; so you don’t blame your lack of success on what you’re eating and stop buying their crap.
As we see, however, success and failure all comes down to the quantity and quality of your food because what you do in the gym is a very minute, albeit integral, part of the process. Contrary to popular thought, the real magic occurs outside of the gym . And depending on what you do with that crapload of time away from it, you can make the time inside it worthless or worthwhile.
The choice is yours!
Glossary: biceps, caloric deficit, calories, cardio deck, dedicated, diet, discipline, exercise, fitness, gym, gym membership, gym rat, meal plan, moderation, nutrition, physique, reps, weight room, work out, workout
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