“Working off” weekend calories!

Our fitness industry also teaches us to equate the calorie content of a food with the “calorie burn” of a workout or exercise. They say, if you eat 400 calories of __________ you can “go undo it” or “burn it off” by doing 400 calories of expenditure on a machine, run, or in a class, right?

No! It doesn’t work like that. Our bodies are very, very smart, not tit-for-tat calculators!

First of all, the “calorie burn” is often waaaaay over estimated. We don’t expend as much as we think, as it’s greatly overestimated. If you must, then get a fitness watch or machine read and divide it in half, at best!

Secondly, most food today is nearly double on portion sizes and carries very high empty-calorie density, meaning it is devoid of anything nutritious. So we are overeating, getting little nutrient benefit in return, and overestimating “the burn”. Therefore, a Monday “weekend undo” is a major pattern setback to wellness and physique goals. Why?

The most important and missed factor of food intake and activity expenditure is the hormonal and chemical response from a food to a body AND from an exercise’s stress impact on the system. There’s NO easy way to measure that on a scale or a watch!

You’re not just an exchange system accruing and deleting calories. You’re an intricate computer with expensive software.

The foods we eat are information to the body. The structure of our fuel tells the body what to do with regards to blood sugar, fat storage, and particle accumulation in the cells. There is way more to the “calorie story”!

The point: We eat. We digest. We interpret messages at a cellular level, commanding the body, immunity, and mindset on how to respond.

Focusing solely on a “calorie burn” and calorie intake is half the story. It is more so about a body’s interpretation to the daily messages we’re sending!