Breaking Bad

Everyone has certain habits and routine tendencies.  Some personalities are better than others at it but ultimately, once a habit is established, they are hard to break.  Habits will make or break you depending upon whether they are good or bad.  This leads me to the point of this article.  A routine diet is most likely not what makes you fat.  It is the extra meals outside of the routine that make you fat.  A normal breakfast may not be the problem.  It is getting to work to find a box of donuts and then eating the extra stuff on top of your normal meal that is causing the calories to add up.

Anyone who knows me can testify to the fact that I am very routine and structured.  The same goes with my diet.  I eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch every single day.  This usually includes snacks as well.  A while back, I decided to add more protein to my diet through a protein shake at night.  Problem was that I added this in ADDITION to my normal snack I have at night.  That is what this extra protein shake became to my weight...an ADDITION.

Now I only add the protein shake when I know I have burned more calories on a certain day.  Otherwise I substitute it for something else instead of just adding it or I skip it altogether. After starting this, I immediately dropped the extra weight.  You have to maintain that caloric balance and portion control to maintain your weight.  To gain or lose weight, you have to skew those numbers either positively or negatively.  It really isn't rocket science.

Weight gain or weight loss is a simple formula.  If you take in more calories than you burn, you gain weight.  If you burn more calories than you take in, you lose weight.  The complexity comes when you start talking about the types of food you eat, the way your body responds to those foods, and the genetic make-up and body composition of each person.  These all have an effect on your weight but simply speaking, calories in must equal or be less than calories being burned otherwise there is weight gain.

Just keep in mind, if you eat breakfast and an hour later you eat a donut because there was a big box sitting in the break room at work, you have to either burn those extra calories off through exercise or take something out of your normal diet to keep a caloric balance. One way or another you will have to either work it off or go without during another meal or snack if you want to keep from gaining weight.  Ultimately you have to decide if that extra donut is worth the extra work, want or WEIGHT!