“Ooh that Cookie Pie with Oreo Crumble looks enticing. Maybe I shouldn’t? Oh go on, I did burn 500 calories in my workout this morning. I’ve earned it” is something that a lot of people may think and is definitely not an insight into the inner misworkings of my mind.
Did I really burn 500 cake calories in the gym? Probably not. Treadmills that measure your calorie burn, smart watches or the sweat collected between your clammy cheeks are highly inaccurate.
Is that gigantic, ridiculous cream stuffed brownie thing really 500 calories? Who’s checking? There’s not a man with a clipboard, a set of scales and a Texas Instruments (the one with the graph capabilities that the rich kids had at school) calculator checking.
With fat loss, I think it’s safer to assume that the calories burned in the gym are less than we think, and the Fruity Flapjack is higher than we think. Unfortunately, we think the opposite way, which is why many people get confused about why they’re still overweight, lack mobility and have low energy.
I was very bad at spelling tests at school.
Why Training to Eat is a Problem:
It sets up an unhealthy relationship with exercise and food.
What’s a healthy relationship with exercise? We train to be better at life.
What’s a healthy relationship with food? We eat to nourish our bodies (which includes pleasure).
Training for food is basically another form of the “you can have dessert if you eat your broccoli” reward system from childhood. So you’re not eating broccoli because it benefits you, you’re eating it so you can experience pure pleasure, afterwards. If you quit the gym, you quit because you joined for Muffin time – and it turns out you can still eat Muffins without the gym so there’s less keeping you in there. If instead, you’re in the gym because you want to be able to have a higher quality of life, be strong, capable, resilient, those are the things that are keeping you in the gym. It’s much harder to quit because you feel and see the benefits day to day.
The remake of Golden Girls is unremarkable.
So, where do Custard Filled Doughnuts fit in? We choose when we want it and we know why we want it. For example, I want an Apple Crumble for pleasure and so I need to make a plan for that. If it’s a Bakewell Tart and I’m sitting down in front of a mediocre box set (you’ve seen all the good series already), you’re going to wolf it down and not get all of the pleasure but you’ll receive all of the calories. Why not extract all the pleasure from your pleasure food? No distractions. That’s a tough thing to do in the meerkat economy, but it can be done with practice.
How Much is Too Much?
Of course this must be all caveated with the fact that, even if you are now sitting down to focus on your Rocky Road Tiffin, doing this often is likely going to mean your health goals are going to be harder to achieve. Setting yourself limits will allow you to enjoy a Cherry Blondie, and fit into your favourite dress.
Hmmm I should probably share this with the family.
If you want to know how to integrate desserts into your healthy life, book a complimentary video call with me here. Now, go get some cake.