Today we’re talking about nutrition on workout days vs. rest days and this is going to be in the context of fat loss because that’s what I do, I help busy professionals lose fat and get healthy, so let’s dig in…
The first question that we’re going to address is, how many calories does the average workout burn…? Because that’s super relevant when we’re talking about eating more or less on a day that you workout vs. not.
This is going to depend on a 2 key factors, one is how fit or unfit you are and the other is how big or small you are…so, fitter people can burn more calories during workouts than less fit folks because they can do more work and bigger people burn more calories during workouts than smaller people simply because they’re bigger, for example…
If we look at a small and unfit individual, they are going to burn the least amount of calories while working out and if we look at a big and fit individual, they are going to burn the most amount of calories while working out…so it’s actually a spectrum because we have…
Small and unfit
Small and fit
Big and unfit
Big and fit
The kicker is that these differences aren’t all that applicable to the vast majority of folks just because most people aren’t at either extreme…most people have an average level of fitness and they’re not super big or super small and so if we take the average man and woman…how many calories can they burn during an average workout that’s an hour or so in length?
We’re looking at about 150ish-250ish calories…it’s a lot less than we’d hope it would be.
If you look this stuff up online, you’re going to see larger numbers for a few reasons…one is that calorie trackers wildly overestimate the amount of calories that folks burn and the second is that when calories burned are assessed, they’re often assessed with the inclusion of resting calories burned, for example…
You burn calories sitting on the couch just to maintain things like your heartbeat, brain function, organ function etc. and so we can’t exactly add those calories to the quote unquote ‘exercise’ total because you would have burned them anyway. Point being…
Workouts don’t burn very many calories, 150ish to 250ish for most folks…that’s not a lot! A decent sized apple has about 150 calories…and this makes sense because we know via experience that we cannot out-exercise a poor diet no matter how hard we try…and I’ve tried hard, it just doesn’t work!
So, having said all of that, should you eat more calories on workout days vs. rest days…if you want to you can, but by no means do you need to. Also, we’re chatting about this in the context of fat loss and in order to lose fat we need to be in a calorie deficit and so if you feel as though there’s some unwritten rule about eating more on workout days, you may just slow down your fat loss progress.
Now it’s worth mentioning that if you find that eating a little bit more on workout days improves your performance to such a large degree that it allows you to burn so many more calories that you offset that increase, you might want to do that.
Also, if for some reason you’re working out for 2, 3 or 4 hours a day like a pro athlete, you also might want to include a few more calories, however very few folks are doing that.
What I would recommend focusing on is adhering to your calorie deficit over the course of the week as a whole and not getting bogged down in day to day details like eating slightly more on workout days vs. rest days because doing so is an example of ‘majoring in the minors’ and the simpler that you can keep things (while getting results of course) the better because it’s just easier to follow and track!
Personally, I do not go out of my way to increase my calorie intake on days that I workout vs. not because I’m just not using that much energy when I workout, in fact…because I walk so much and on days that I don’t workout I typically walk even more, I’m actually burning more calories on my quote unquote ‘non-workout’ days than I am on my ‘workout’ days. For example…
The average hour long walk is going to burn more calories than the average hour long workout…this is typically really hard for folks to grasp because they feel as though they are working so much harder via workouts than they are via walks, but that’s typically not the case as a whole! For example…
If you go for an hour long walk, you are supporting your bodyweight the entire time and you’re moving the entire time…you’re not sitting down in between sets or just standing there waiting to recover before doing another exercise or outsourcing your bodyweight to something like a spin bike or elliptical…you are supporting your body and moving the entire hour!
If you’re curious to learn about just how much more effective walking is vs. workouts for fat loss specifically, listen to episode #227 of the podcast titled ‘the most underrated exercise for fat loss.’
What about professional athletes, why do you see NFL football and NBA basketball players drinking Gatorade on the sideline or pro runners and triathletes sucking down carbohydrate filled gels during exercise?
There are a bunch of factors at play here, one is that these folks are prioritizing performance over everything because their jobs quite literally depend on it, also they’re already lean meaning, their goal is NOT fat loss.
In fact, athletes often have a hard time maintaining their weight because they’re training for 4-6 hours per day and yes that requires quite a few calories, but it also means that they have less time to eat outside of their exercise sessions…the time aspect very often goes overlooked.
Athletes also cannot eat too much at any given meal because they likely have to workout again in a couple of hours…performing vigorous exercise on a full stomach is not fun nor is it good for performance!
These folks are training multiple times per day because it’s their career and so if the average person working a desk job starts mimicking what pro athletes or people training like pro athletes are doing, that’s a recipe for a lot of fat gain!
So, do you need to eat more on workout days, no you don’t, but you can if you’d like to. You also don’t need to eat less on rest days, especially if you’re walking a bunch, however you can if you’d like to.
Also, the average person does not need to suck down a protein shake right after working out, eating regular highly quality protein containing meals is going to tick your recovery box without a problem.
The average individual also does not need to quote unquote ‘replenish glycogen stores’ which is just a fancy way of saying stored carbohydrates because again, eating regular high quality meals is going to cover those bases without any issues.
Focus on adhering to a calorie deficit, getting the vast majority of your calories from single ingredient whole foods, being sure that a good chunk of those calories are coming from animal protein and then feel free to fill in your carbohydrate and fat quantities based on your personal preferences.
Oh and also move a bunch via ideally hitting 10,000 steps per day and get enough sleep so that you’re waking up feeling rested and alert each and every day. If you want workout on top of that, even better…but by no means do you have to go to the gym to lose tons of fat or just be healthy.
