Over the summer, I gained a few kilo’s. Holidays, relaxed living and being out of routine did the damage.
At the weekend, Fran and I decided to get back to our normal routine, a bit of exercise most days and lots of vegetables on our plates while being aware of calorie intake.
I have to track calories to maintain control, Fran does it on auto by paying attention to how she’s feeling.
I have a fancy gadget that lets me know how many calories I burn per day pretty accurately. On non-active days, it can be as low as 1700 and my non-active days generally have at least 5000 steps in.
Over the week, I try to average under 2000 and get a 3-500 exercise session in.
The problem for me comes when I have exercise planned later in the day and pre-load some extra calories ready for it. Something then happens and I might not get chance to train and I’m then way up on my intake.
It also breaks the rule I have with my clients of using exercise as a balancing tool for excess calories but the opposite way round.
Exercise and diet a part of the weight loss picture but in my opinion for normal people, should be completely separate entities.
You should eat to improve your health and feel good, when this is the focus, weight loss tends to happen anyway.
Exercise to improve your health, feel good and look amazing, performance in all areas tends to improve when this is the focus.
Don’t play one of against the other.
Exercise shouldn’t be a punishment for poor food choices.
Food shouldn’t be a reward for a few minutes sweating.
As always, these messages are as much about reminding myself to set an example.
Darren “unloading” Checkley
The picture is the snacks me and a friend took with us to do the Welsh 3000’s in May. We also had a friend meeting us with breakfast. We carried way too much and didn’t even make a dent in the amount we had, “better to have it and not need it” was in my head when organising. Next time it will be greatly reduced.
