In theory yes, you could out-train a bad diet (calories in vs calories out).

However, in reality, I don’t know anyone who would have the time to out-train a bad diet. 

When I was 20, at uni, and training for an Ironman, I could literally eat what I wanted and not put on weight. So, I did out-train a bad diet. 

But, I was training 20 hours a week, on top of that a fair amount of my university course was practical. Add to that, I had been playing sport since the age of 5, hence my metabolism and body were in good shape, and pretty efficient at burning fuel. Add to that again, I was pretty stress free, apart from worrying about running out of money near the end of the month.

Those were the days I use to follow the man around Tesco, who dropped the prices of products due to the use-by-date (this is actually true!)

Anyway, you get my point. I was probably burning around 4500-5000 calories per day, every day. 

No one has the time or energy in modern day times to be able to do this due to work, family and social commitments, however I see and hear of people trying to do this all the time (most unconsciously!) 

For example, have you ever said this;

“I’ve trained today, so its okay”, whilst eating a heap of chocolate, popping open a bag of crisps, or dipping into the biscuit jar. 

Or this. “I best burn of that cheesecake from last night, haha” 

People who say this are insinuating that they are going to try and out-train their bad diet. They say it jokingly, but they do actually mean and believe it.

Now, from time-to-time this might occur.

For example, after a holiday you may train a bit more and a little harder to work off the few pounds you gained, however if you’re doing this every week, then, without realising you generally think that you can out-train your bad diet, and this may be why you’re not progressing as much as you would like to be. 

There are more issues with this. If someone tries to out-train their bad diet often by working harder in the gym and training more, they will likely be putting un-needed stress on the body. This could lead to many outcomes like over-training or under-resting, burnout, illness, tiredness, injury, which will all lead to a poorer quality of life and potentially a massive backwards step in terms of your progress and general health and fitness levels. 

So, try not to look at training as something that enables you to binge and eat bad foods. Don’t go into your session thinking, I’m doing this to burn off the chocolate cake, use it as a tool to better yourself, then use your diet as a way to compliment your training and exercise, with a ‘couple’ treats hear and there. 

Training and exercise does so much more for you than burning calories!!! Plus, you burn more calories when you’re not training, compared to when you’re training every week (think about it), additionally it takes:

– 236 burpees to burn of a snickers
– 218 to burn off an average pink ring donut 
– 493 to burn off an average slice of chocolate cake 
– 1,266 to burn off a dominoes pizza 

(I’ve used burpees as an example, as they burn the most calories per rep compared to most exercises – this doesn’t mean they are the best exercise, like I said theres much more to training and exercise the calories) 

Basically, you’ve got your work cut out.

Why make life harder and more stressful for yourself by eating cr*p a lot of the time, and then trying to beat the first law of thermodynamics. This is like me entering a spelling competition………… Not a good idea!

Maybe people binge and then smash themselves in the gym trying to burn it off as a form of self-harm? I don’t know why and there are many contributing factors, but I think its important for everyone to understand that it doesn’t work, and the you might be ding it without realising. 

#youcan’touttrainabaddiet