Imagine this scenario: you head to the gym, hop on a treadmill in the cardio cinema and run for half an hour at a steady 10-minute pace all while watching an episode of your favorite sitcom. Your workout is done, and you’ve covered three miles. Great job! To reward yourself for your hard work, you pick up a mango smoothie. Smoothies are healthy, right? Well I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but guess what? That 300 calorie smoothie nullifies the 300 calories you just burned during your run. In five minutes, you’ve undone half an hour’s worth of hard work.
This is why you see so often that diet is 70% or even 80% of the weight loss journey. It’s so easy to undo even hours of hard work in mere minutes. That large fry you just had? It’ll take over five miles of running to burn it off.
The flip side to this equation is that you can get some of the benefits of long, arduous workout sessions simply by changing up how much you consume. Do you drink lots of soda each day? Just cutting out one each day is the calorie equivalent to running one and a half (a can) to two and a half (20 oz bottle) miles every day.
What can you cut back on to help you lose weight AND save you some time? Let me know in the comments!