“I’ll work out to burn that off”…yeah probably not.

Hello!!! My blog is back from summer vacation! Rejoice

Well I don’t know about you but this summer was the fastest one of my life. I confess – the high heat kept me in the air conditioned gym on the treadmill more than on the streets with those die hard runners. Sometimes it kept me in an air conditioned bar. I confess – I ate a lot of pizza this summer. And now thanks to my boyfriend and my training colleague, I have developed a taste for “real beer”. And that real beer comes with a much higher calorie count than my Mich Ultra. But as I always say, permanent health and weight loss must be a way of life. You can’t over restrict yourself, because you’ll eventually give in and possibly give up. You can’t be too easy on yourself, because then you’ll always have some sort of excuse and never hold yourself accountable. It took a while but I have found the ever so important balance of work and play. Gym and pizza.

So I may have taken a blogging vacation but it looks like a lot of people have taken a summer hiatus from their usual healthy habits. I get it! Summer means BBQs, beer, trips, ice cream, relaxation. Who wants to hit the gym to work out when it’s gorgeous out? Who wants to be the only one at the BBQ eating a salad? Who wants to skip happy hour to run? And who cares if I eat that third hot dog?…I’ll just burn it off tomorrow!

As some of you may know, I have concluded the last two summers with a 20k road race in New Haven. This year’s race was beautiful. Over 6000 runners. Great weather. Much better than last year where I swore my feet were literally going to fall off my body from the 8th mile on. Anyway, a 20k is just under 12.5 miles and it took me about 2 hours to finish this year. Now this may seem like sooo much exercise and even I first thought I must have burned like 2000 calories running like this. Well, that really isn’t the case for someone my size, running at my pace. As much as I wish it was more, I only burn about 80 calories a mile. So after my two hours of nonstop running, I only really burned 992 calories. That’s like an Oreo McFlurry and a small fries. Or a few glasses of wine. 3 glasses of good beer. Or half of a Cold Stone milkshake.

So the point of all this is to get all you folks who think it’s so easy to “burn it off” at some later moment in time some perspective on just how much burning actually has to take place. Does anyone really ever have a spare 2 hours in a given day? Do most normal people want to run to work? Probably not. And to make matters worse, most people grossly overestimate how many calories they burn. The calorie burn on cardio machines is up to 30% off. And most people grossly underestimate how many calories they consume. Yes a glass of wine is about 110 calories, but when your glass is a pint glass that number no longer applies…

The moral of the story is to think BEFORE you consume.

Yes metabolism is more complex than just “eat a bagel = run 3 miles”. Lean body mass, work out intensity, and genetics all contribute to that magical number of calories that determines how much we can eat and still lose weight and how much we can eat to not gain weight. But that simple mantra “calories in, calories out” is for the most part very true.

So what we need to do is rethink the CALORIES IN part. Instead of trying to “do an hour and a half on the elliptical”, how about you just don’t eat that piece of cake?

Of course we need to enjoy our lives! Otherwise why the hell are we trying to get healthy and live longer? It’s about that balance. I found it. I can help you find it too!

Contact me with any questions!
Time to get back on track
Keep up the good work!

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