Does Your Workout Include Dessert?

Perhaps you’ve seen this workout T-shirt. It reads: “So I can eat chocolate cake.”

I chuckled the first time I spied it on a woman doing bicep curls in the front row of a weight-lifting class.

It turns out a lot of us hit the gym because we need to burn off that chocolate cake that we ate the night before – or the slice we’re planning on eating tonight.

This is fine if you’ve reached your weight loss goal and you don’t eat cake every night.

But don’t get sucked into this mentality if you’re trying to lose weight. It will undo all the hard work you put in at the gym.

And even if you have hit your weight loss goals, indulging regularly in fatty, high-calorie food that has little nutritional benefit is a risky habit. If you miss a few workouts, it doesn’t take long for those bites of cake to add up to pounds.

So, how serious a problem is this?

Enough for researchers in the United Kingdom to study how it affects diabetics. It turns out that people recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes lost just as much weight watching their diet as those who went on a diet but exercised as well.

Why?

Because the ones who exercised felt that they didn’t have to be so rigid with their nutrition so they cheated a little, according to a news release from the American Diabetes Association.

Imagine how much progress you can make when you take control of your eating habits and exercise regularly.

Alice Warchol is a fitness instructor and freelance health writer.

+ Know Your Body Mass Index

+ Read about Medically Supervised Diets