Should you eat your calories back from exercise?
Good morning. It's Tuesday week three, and it's gonna be a good day. I could feel it. It's another first decision we make a day to be in a good mood, and that's the decision we're making right now to be in a good mood to focus on today. So Doctor P's nutrition call yesterday, just a quick recap on why you should listen to it.
Speaker 1:Again, it's not always about the, like, brown rice versus white rice. It's not about that. You can zoom out more. And, you know, the topic of how to track when you're eating out. Well, you can't track accurately when you eat out most of the time because the calorie information is not there.
Speaker 1:What you can do is do your best. Overestimate, put her in, and leave her at that. And actually, that's enough. And, you know, if you do track your weight every day, which is something we can do easily, the app and you measure yourself in the app, right, and you you tie you you do the is your clothes fitting tighter or looser, and you have progress pictures and stuff, the app will understand if you make a progress or not anyway. So if progress isn't being made after the x amount of weeks, right, then you're not really overestimating the calories you're eating out, and you're saying you're in within your calories, the app will start saying, well, if you are on track with the calories after x amount of time.
Speaker 1:Your measurements are not dropping. Your weight's not dropping. Your foot your clothes are not fitting. There's a tracking accuracy go there's a tracking inaccuracy going on, and that's why we have to look into these things. But, again, you're on a one pound of fat loss per week program.
Speaker 1:You're one pound of fat a week, moderate amount of fat to lose per week. If you don't track if you do track and you go over, right, it just means most of you might not be hitting the one pound of fat loss a week, and it might be like half a pound of fat a week, and that's fine. Some weeks you don't lose fat, and that's fine. There are a lot of the wins you get. So you didn't gain fat or lose fat, but you trained, you got your stronger body, built mental resilience, spoke in a community, spoke on Zoom for the first time, came on Turtle Radio, had many wins, building better habits, feeling better in yourself, eating vegetables, understanding macros more, like so many wins going on in the week that the weight part, yeah, we lose a bit of weight here, lose a bit of weight there, can maintain win one week, maybe one week, you'll be a slight gain.
Speaker 1:And it's just a trend over time. And I think a lot of people have posted in the group now, like Melanie and other people have their graphs of weight loss and you can see clearly that it's up and down up and down with the downward trajectory happening but the weight is always up and down. There's some big spikes low, big spike down but it's always within the realm of say, five, ten pounds. It's always spiking. So that's fine.
Speaker 1:I just wanna get that out of the way. And doctor p did a really good point last night. He was like, people will go from f 45 to orange theory to Barry's boot camp to this program, that program, this weight loss plan, that weight loss plan. But it really all boils down to how can I stop overeating my and my meals? How can I stop my cons my constant snacking?
Speaker 1:Like, whilst you've got a new face of the plans you're on, are you really tackling the underlying issue, which is the fact that we can't sit with ourselves and be happy with x amount of food we've had, therefore, we overeat, or we can't sit inside a house and not eat every snack in sight, or we can't go to any social scenario and not let it run away and, you know, we're just kind of going crazy, like do what plan what work or plans help him with that? Nothing. It's all about understanding these things and awareness. So, yeah, don't run away. Guys, if you think it's hard and stuff, don't run away from it.
Speaker 1:We have to face these. We have to work from facts. Remember this. We work from facts. We don't work from non facts.
Speaker 1:A non fact is, well, I I want to be I want to be, someone who is in control of their snack and I want be someone who never has cravings. But we always have cravings. We're always greedy human beings. That's the fact. We live with our fact.
Speaker 1:We're greedy human beings. Okay. Let's work from that fact. So we're very greedy. Yes.
Speaker 1:Okay. Now we're in a scenario where there's food, there's snacks. Do we have to be fighting the fact that I don't want to be greedy? So by the fact of me trying not to be greedy and overeating, I'm actually creating a conflict in my mind. And that battle in my head, and you can call it the chimp versus a human, you can call it just general conflict of the mind.
Speaker 1:That battle between me not wanting to be greedy and not wanting to eat that thing is causing so much conflict. We're fighting ourselves and eventually this breaks us down and we eventually break in and eat that snack or go over it. But if we just sit with the fact, I am greedy, that food is in front of me, and I do feel the power for me to have is I'm greedy, but actually just observe that fact. And that's what doctor p was saying, the awareness of observing that I'm greedy, and I do want to eat snacks, and I do want to eat more food, and I do want to dessert, and I do want more wine. Let's observe without trying to change the fact, and the fighting goes still.
Speaker 1:And when the fighting goes still, we have have a chance to make a decision. And that's the power. That decision, we get them to choose. You know what? I am feeling a craving for that.
Speaker 1:You know, I've I'm feeling I feel like I could eat another dessert. I feel like I could have a few more pints, but I understand the pulls me. I get it. It's powerful. Stuff really beyond my control, like, you know, looking at this amazing fudge cake.
Speaker 1:It's it's it's so tempting. Other people around me are having it. We're all in a decline because I see the powers army in a decline. And this is the battle. This is the ultimate showdown on on health and fitness, isn't it?
Speaker 1:If you really break it down, it is this. Like, can we eat to fullness and not overeat? And when do we know when we're full? Well, plate sizes have gone bigger. Larges have turned into mediums, and mediums have turned in smalls in size wise.
Speaker 1:You know, that's two XL now is like a large back in the day. No. It's the other way around. Large now is like a two XL back in the day. So we're always gonna be fighting this.
Speaker 1:So I'd suggest you go and listen back to that, session with doctor p because we cover more than that as well. We there's another topic we cover as well as the fact like, should you eat back the calories you burn from exercise? And answer, no, you shouldn't. Let me tell you why you shouldn't do this. This is the this is the first trip up people did in health and fitness.
Speaker 1:Advice before was, eat back the calories. So, know, run off, you know, you have if you if you do a run, you can have a Mars bar and all that stuff. And and MyFitnessPal has this setting on automatically, so it will automatically reduce, add back your calories that you've done through walking and working problem with this is that we burn way less calories than we think doing exercise. You do an hour of workouts, you might burn three to 400 calories. Okay?
Speaker 1:And that's continuous working out for an hour. Whatever your fitness tracker say is not going to be accurate. They are in studies, they are off by 21 to 91%. They might show trends, but they're not accurate. So and we know working out is it is is the is like the third biggest impact or maybe the fourth biggest impact on our metabolic rate.
Speaker 1:So your metabolic rate is broken into four segments, right? You've got your base metabolic rate which is the calories your body burns to survive and you know just to work and that's about 50 to 55% of your calories per day is done through just genuine general function. Right? The next big one is your non exercise activity. Your walking, your fidgeting, your, you know, sitting and standing, all these small movements we do.
Speaker 1:That's the next big part of our, calories burned per day. Right? Then it's the thermic effect of food. The calories we burn through eating, and protein has the highest thermic thermic effect of food because it takes more to break it down and stuff like that. So you burn more calories digesting protein than you would carbs and fat.
Speaker 1:So if you are gonna overeat on your macros, try and overeat on protein because it's it very rarely does get eventually break down in terms of the fats, hard for it to do. The last one in most cases, sometimes it does reverse and some people do more exercise than the thermic effect of food. But it's exercise. Exercise is minuscule in the in the course of the week, and we're always looking at weekly averages. If you work out once a day for an hour, you might burn 300 calories per per session maybe.
Speaker 1:Right? Most people don't work out an hour and you'll quickly find that the of the normal average person, which is all of us, working out every day will cause burnout over time. The reason it causes burnout is because we got all the day to day activities we do. We got family and stuff as well. We've got the working out itself, but then we've got the gradual breakdown.
Speaker 1:So we're not giving ourselves enough rest. We're not giving ourselves the rest and recovery to get back stronger. We're always on the go. We're always stressed with work, family, and we're always putting ourselves through workouts. Eventually leads to burnout.
Speaker 1:So in reality, we want about three to four sessions a week. Okay? Sometimes more if you're pushing for bigger things, and that's not gonna burn as much calories. And we don't care how many calories it burns. We don't care how many calories a strength workout burns.
Speaker 1:The purpose of the strength workout is to get stronger, build muscle. The purpose of yoga isn't to burn calories, it's to improve your balance and flexibility and stillness. The purpose of boxing isn't to burn calories, it's to get your body moving energy through it, shifting energy from the feet to the hips to hands, feeling unleashing stress, feeling on top of the world, feeling powerful, that's what boxing's for. You know the sweat, tread, and lift with Janine, that's not really about burning calories either. That's about total body conditioning.
Speaker 1:How much can you push your body muscular endurance wise? So you look at these workouts and really we don't care about calories in either of them. It's nice maybe to we know we burn calories but it's not things. So that's why if you think about well I'll burn I'll do more exercise so I can eat more snacks. It's just foolish because what's gonna happen is you're gonna burn less than you think, you're gonna eat more than you think, and you're gonna ruin that deficit you're in.
Speaker 1:And actually, the where the where we need to rule forks over control is over moderation. That's the big battleground, the moderation. There's enough to be battleground, but that's where the tension needs to go, on a moderation on this journey. And, in terms of moderation, like, it it means different things for other people. Like, does that mean does it mean the same every day?
Speaker 1:No. But what it for for me what it means for me is questioning myself. And the studies in this, like the Batman study, asking kids what would Batman do when they were giving them a choice between eating like fruit or, chips. And if they ask themselves what would Batman do, they were way more likely to go for the apple slices versus the chips. And it's kinda like similar what we need to say.
Speaker 1:We're like, what would like, what would the person we, we look up to do in a situation? What would the ideal person why would the what would the, the ultimate version of me do? And ask yourself, you know, and if we ask ourselves this and someone commented in the chat last night as well saying that they did do this, they went, they zoomed back and looked at their goals and it stopped making a decision in an impulsive decision just get a delivery or just you know eat snacks and stuff. So moderation is questioning our behaviors, is this necessary? Marcus Aurelius would say all the time when you look you'll come to stoicism, he'd always say, is this necessary?
Speaker 1:And if we ask ourselves this in terms of eating, think it's a brilliant tactic. Scott, is eating that third pear necessary? It's not, mate. You've had one pear, it was lush, it was nice. Stop eating the fucking bears.
Speaker 1:Just have one. Why? What's wrong with you? Is it necessary to eat as fast as I do? No, it's not.
Speaker 1:I need to slow down. You know, is it necessary to go to Sainsbury's every day and buy ready foods and when you can just meal prep for three days up front and have all of veggies you want. You know, to question looking into my own behaviors and actually I would I needed to be better at cooking and that's because I've been upfront about this for this challenge is for me is to meal prep and get more veg in. And is it necessary for me to keep going convenient food, spending all my money? Is it necessary if you have a delivery at the end of the day when you had a meal an hour ago?
Speaker 1:Is it necessary if you have takeaway in Sunday morning when you could just get up and walk to the shop and get loads of fruits and veggies and and you're not you know, local stuff and have that instead? So start questioning yourselves guys because we have been conditioned by this society we're into overindulge on everything. Every single thing we have been conditioned to overindulge on. Think about it. Food, clothing, buying houses, buying more houses, more money with our job, more status, more jewelry, you know, more fame online, more social status, more followers, more likes, more comments, more abs, all this stuff.
Speaker 1:All this more, more, more, more, more. And we do have to put a fork in and go, is this necessary? What are we saying? When do we say this? When are we gonna take a stand against this?
Speaker 1:So we're gonna go with the lemons and go, yeah. Yeah. I'll just be tell whatever whatever pops up on my news feed I wanna do, whatever pops up on my explore feed, whatever I see on the tube station to buy, I'll just wither away, and I'll just follow what this world is telling me to do, and I'll have no free will whatsoever. Is that how we wanna wanna live, or do we wanna live by actually going, is this necessary? Let me have a look at this.
Speaker 1:Let me question this. My first impression, let me question this. Let me have a look at this. Is this right? Is this is this wrong?
Speaker 1:And let's navigate with a bit more attention to the now. What you'll find is when you're thinking of the future, you get anxiety in the past, you know, they say the past is depression and the future is anxiety, but it's probably a mix. When we're always thinking of, like, tomorrow or yesterday, we don't focus on now. Yeah? And we tend to be more impulsive then because we haven't got our our attention in the now.
Speaker 1:When you got your your attention in the now, you are fully aware of the forces upon you throughout the day. You can see, oh, that's that's nice. See now. I see that my acting on my tons of that. Can see how that would have pulled me in.
Speaker 1:You start being very attentive to yourself in the in the present moment and you'll notice you've got far more control when you think about your next action. When we're not attentive in the present moment and we're daydreaming, we're and there, you know how many times have you walked with your phone yeah, you walk on your phone and you text in and you're walking through public and you sometimes realise wow I've just walked through that entire park or up this entire road and I didn't look really once at the road next to me, didn't really pay attention to any cars I passed or people I walked past or people who walked past me, I don't really know how many people did. Like you actually don't know the number, it's quite scary. You could have just walked in the road like there's so many things you missed because your attention was elsewhere. Yeah, I don't know if any of you have had that realization before but I've done that many times.
Speaker 1:And I start questioning wow, like what I miss out then? So now focusing, or if I did focus what would have I seen? You know you could have seen someone rob someone in the top left of your eyesight but you never you're not really there but you it's there happening and you're only looking, and you're on your phone and it happens, it goes up and oh my god really? That's kind of how we need to navigate our nutrition journey. We can't just keep, like, being our mind elsewhere because then we'll have a snack here, bite there, nibble there, decision to do that there.
Speaker 1:And I leave you with this quote and this again by one of the Stoics' epithetors. He says, you should have your mind being attentive just as you are if you were barefoot walking on a cobbled street. So if you're walking on the stones on the beach and and stuff like that, on the rocks, you know, and you're barefoot, you're really attentive where your feet go, right? Because one wrong move and that ankle is twisting, you break your ankle. Okay?
Speaker 1:That's normal. So we go okay, I'm watching you and you go slow and you're standing, you're still moving forward of course, but you're like okay, and you're watching out. And he says that's what we should be with our own mind day to day. We should be always watching out. We'll slip there, slip there.
Speaker 1:Is that gonna go and twist my mind? Is that gonna do this and that? And he says you should have that attention in your mind. It's actually more powerful and more important to have that in the mind. And that's if you can bring that attention to your eating.
Speaker 1:I promise you today is gonna be easier for you. You 'll notice things and you won't react to them and you'll respond. So give it a go today. Be very attentive today. Think about the walking on the stones and the rocks and being there with the mind and see how it goes.
Speaker 1:And don't try and change the forces upon you, you know the conditioning, cravings and all stuff and the world around us because we can't change the world really. But look how it impacts you and like kind of let that emotion wash through you without reacting to it. That's kind of how I envision it. As I feel, I feel craving for it, but then just like sit and accept it and just do that with everything today be attentive and let me know what happens and you know, see if you do have more control in your day. But enjoy your day guys.
Speaker 1:I hope it goes well. Get you one big thing done as always and you'll eventually do more things, the classic mind trick. But please watch that Q and A. Have a good day and yeah, live one day at a time because it's all we can do.
