Mason Harris A slice of cake with a lot of chocolate after training can, can’t it? After all, you’ve done a lot of exercise, you need to replenish your energy and you deserve a treat. But that’s not how it works. This is the universal speech of those who believe in the effect of deserving compensation: training to be able to eat whatever you want and stick your foot in the jackfruit without pain in your conscience. But studies show that this cycle has consequences.
Watch out for the compensation effect
The study was carried out with 171 sedentary men and women, overweight and aged between 18 and 65 years, after weight, resting metabolic rates, typical hunger levels, aerobic conditioning and daily food intake and spending were measured of energy.
At the end of the process, the participants who maintained their routines did not change. However, the result was the same for most practitioners who entered exercise programs. Few lost a few pounds, about two-thirds of those in the shortest exercise group, and 90% of those in the longest exercise group did not reach the expected goal, as they had made up for the extra calorie burn by eating even more.
Everything is always a matter of balance
The person eats well from Monday to Thursday, but he arrives on Friday, he sends the ‘sextou’ and the feijoada comes for lunch with the guys from work and, at night, they have snacks with the drinks of happy hour . On Saturday, there is the beach with lunch on the street, a pizza at the end of the day and, arriving on Sunday, come family gatherings with a full table and the bill doesn’t close.
Living life with eating habits, like the ones Bruna explained, will not work if the goal is to gain lean body mass. Imagine the following: from Monday to Friday, you consume an average of 1500 kcal / day with a balanced diet; on Friday, 2200 kcal / day, because some silly food entered the menu, and Saturday and Sunday it reaches a total of 6000kcal with plenty.
The result turns out not to be very encouraging, as the whole week’s effort was partially lost in three days standing on the jackfruit. But do not blame the difficulty of losing weight only on carbohydrates (sweets, breads, pasta, etc.). Unlike what many think, they are not the great villains of history, but exaggeration.
An ideal amount of post-workout carbohydrates, for example, helps replenish the glycogen stores lost during exercise, and the combination with protein becomes essential for the recovery of damaged cells.
This concern is not only for aesthetics, but also for health
The body ends up being tricked into this imbalance between exercise almost every day and unhealthy eating habits. The well-known “concertina effect” – the one that puts on weight and recurrent weight loss – is one of the consequences offered to the body in this process. Loss of muscle mass, increased cholesterol, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases are some of the losses of this lack of control.
There are physical exercises, combined with an adequate diet for each person and lifestyle, which are more effective than others in helping to lose weight. Bodybuilding is one of them, as it helps with weight loss and building lean mass, in addition to making your shirt sweat a lot.
Is training in the morning or in the afternoon better than at night?
Throughout the day, cortisol (the stress hormone) works in peaks, but at night, it needs to lower for melatonin (the hormone linked to sleep) to increase and be able to work well. This is necessary for the person to be able to rest body and mind, because high cortisol prevents weight loss – and that is not the purpose, right?
The nutritionists also states that whoever wants to have a healthier life, adapting to a balanced diet and exercising regularly, needs to have the guidance of a professional – both in the office and in the gym. It is necessary to understand, before taking any step, what are the objectives, the nutritional history, the amount of body fat and other factors that help to move to a new moment of more health care.
