Reason number one is it takes precious time needed for recovery from your training.
When you train or strength train you are building muscle or trying to retain the existing muscle you have.
When you are dropping calories to lose weight or lose body fat, we want it all to come from that body fat.
If you don’t train at the same time, you are going to lose that from muscle as well and this is where your your dieting comes in.
Where you end up back where you started, if not even worse.
Reason number two, is it often masks poor nutrition choices or even encourages them.
After an exercise class or a burning calories session, the feeling of deserving a treat, deserving something as a reward, often comes in and that’s where we often intake too many calories relative to what we just burned.
Reason number three is that usually burning calories or that sort of mindset is a temporary thing.
If you don’t enjoy it, you’re probably not going to do it that long.
You’re going to maybe drop weight if you’re lucky but you won’t be able to sustain it and you’ll end up right back where you started.
That’s where better nutrition comes in, where you can start to make choices, make changes that will last for life.
Something you can stick to easily and not feel like you have to constantly burn off calories, burn off that night out, burn off that meal.
The only reasons I see that anyone should be about burning calories or doing that through exercise:
Is if you’re at the lowest amount of calories that you can intake without becoming unhealthy.
- Typically for women that’s 1200 calories.
- Typically for men that’s 1800 calories.
When you get below that you’re starting to have insufficient nutrients and macros that are about maintaining a healthy body.
Or
You actually like it.
If you enjoy running, you enjoy swimming, you do it merely for the cardiovascular benefit, that’s great.
I encourage people to do low intensity activity which doesn’t interfere with the training.
Such as walking, hiking, things like that and if they do love high-intensity activity go for that.
But just be aware of the effect that has on their results with fat loss, with improving their look, with improving their body and improving the performance at work as well.
If you are about burning calories in the week, maybe this is something to think about.
Is this masking poor food choices, is this taking away from strength training or are you even doing strength training to work on retaining that existing muscle you have or improve it and is what you’re doing temporary or you see a long-term future in the way you’re approaching things?
