Last week a client told me they couldn’t lose weight. “I do everything right.” She said. “I work hard when I’m with you! I eat clean. Something is wrong with me!”
I hear these comments from time to time, and they always make me smile. The reason is that fitness is not really all that complicated. Exercise + Eat clean = being fit almost all the time! From time to time people do have other issues but they are not as common as people think.
The issue usually is simple. It quite often comes to drinking calories.
This was the case with my client. When we talked about what she was eating it turned out she was drinking two glasses of wine a week. Not a big deal right?
Well actually it is.
When you think each glass of wine is at least 80 calories that’s an extra 170 calories a day she is taking in, or 1190 calories week, or 4760 extra a month!
Now remember it only takes 3500 extra calories to gain a pound of fat and you see that month in, month out she was going to gain 1.36 lbs each month, or 16.32 lbs a year at her present rate!
Let’s be clear I know most people want to be able to have a drink if they like. That’s totally OK and normal. But also remember if you are going to have those calories you need to either do more exercise, or cut down the number of calories you have somewhere else if you don’t want to gain.
You can do that by only have a glass a wine on the weekends, instead of every day, or even cutting down on something else you eat to make up for it. Even something as simple as changing you drink of choice to something mixed with water will cut the calories you take in.
But you can’t get away with drinking every night and expect nothing to change. Your body doesn’t work that way.
So next time you think about having that drink, remember the number of calories you are having and if there is something else you can have with fewer calories, drink that.
Devin Sherrington is seven time Best Personal Fitness Trainer Halifax award winner, and owner of the award winning fitness studio 360fit in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He lives in Fletcher’s Lake with his girlfriend, award winning stylist Lauren Arbuckle, and children Reign and Journey.
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