Many people embark on their journey of weight loss by taking on some form of diet along with exercise. Both of these weight loss modalities play important roles in getting to your ideal body. However, many people try to overdo it on their cardio and weight training to make up for a bad day or bad weekend of eating.

I see this all the time at the gym- people burning their butt on Mondays to work off the pizza, beer, wings, cheese cake and ice cream. While working harder is a good idea, over doing it is not.

In the end, you can’t out run a bad diet. If you have a bad day, do not try to do an extra hour of cardio the next day. Just take in less calories in the next few meals following the debauchery, while staying on your workout program.

The reason for this is twofold.

First, when you over do it on exercise, you tend to make yourself even more hungry, which can start a vicious cycle. The last thing you want when trying to lose weight is to be hungry.

Second, when you over do it on exercise, you risk making yourself too sore to workout for up to a week. Or worse, expose yourself to injury. If you’re not able to workout, you are missing opportunities to burn more calories.

That being said, of course, not eating the junk foods in the first place, or at least minimizing the damage through food substitutions is way better. Whats easier to do? Not eat a bag of cookies, or spend an hour on the treadmill?