Can You Out-train a Bad Diet?
“You can’t out train a bad diet” is a cool saying that conveys a positive message.
But it is factually incorrect. There are tons of elite athletes who can get away with poor food choices simply due to their super high activity level.
First, simply from a caloric balance perspective. If a cyclist or swimmer has a daily caloric expenditure of 6-7000 calories they won’t get fat if they consume 5000 calories even if a good proportion comes from fast food.
Second, the very high level of physical activity CAN compensate the insulin resistance and cardiovascular risk factors involved with poor eating. Obviously it takes a lot of physical activity, but it can be done.
Heck, Amish people eat a diet very high in saturated fat AND sugar (often eating spoons of sugar for energy) but they are very lean and healthy because they walk 20 000 steps per day and do lots of manual labour.
I’m NOT recommending that you eat crap. But using incorrect sayings that can very easily be proven wrong will do more harm than good when it comes to helping people develop good habits