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Is Your Fitness Tracker Lying To You?

Writer: Katie CrokusKatie Crokus

Ever take a look at your calorie burn after a particularly intense gym session and think...really?! That’s all? Yeah, thanks Apple. In all your infinite wisdom how have you not found a way to solve this crisis yet? 😂 ⠀ Those tracking devices have a lot of application and can offer support in many ways. But when it comes to accurate estimates of calories burned in a workout, they miss the mark big time. ⠀ As we know, individual calorie burn depends on so many factors; lean vs. total body mass, height, age and the list goes on. Knowing that, the best we can hope for is a vague estimate.⠀ What we can execute with relative precision is our calorie intake. And when fat loss is the goal, a calorie deficit is the no-fail way to achieve it. By tracking our nutrition, whether it be macros or overall intake, we get a really clear picture of how to pull the levers required to create that negative energy balance. ⠀ So that 1 hour gym session, while a crucial contribution to the process of body recomposition (not to mention the feel-good high you can’t put a price on), does not put nearly the dent in our deficit that we would like to believe. ⠀ ANNOUNCEMENT 📣The calories burned in the gym, even if you’re breaking sweat, can be undone in about 5 reckless minutes in the kitchen. (Which is why I never track my training in My Fitness Pal - a wise trainer once told me ‘don’t eat your workout’)⠀ But the good news is, we can see a huge calorie drop by making volume swaps to food choices; riced broccoli or cauliflower in your stir fry, butternut squash rather than tater tots in your casserole or spaghetti squash instead of traditional pasta, are just a few suggestions. ⠀ The list is endless and actually really delicious if you are open to an array of seasonings and preparation methods like the air frying or roasting!⠀ In general, we tend to underestimate our calories and overestimate our exercise. It’s human nature. But isn’t it sooo satisfying to close all those rings? Well played Apple.


September 17, 2019

 
 
 

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