It’s National Pizza Day today in the USA, and as we often – rightly or wrongly – follow America, expect it to be a recognised day in the UK soon too.
But remember you are what you eat! And most pizzas definitely don’t fall into the healthy category… Many of the commercial pizzas we eat are loaded with fatty cheese, white flour and too much salt.
Then, next week it’s Pancake Day – again many pancakes are overloaded with stuff that’s bad for us: sugar, salt and then the toppings that we spread all over such as syrup and chocolate sauce, as well as even more sugar!
So it’s the ideal time to remind ourselves that’ll never get fit and look good if we don’t also look after ourselves through what we eat.
Or put another way, why you can never exercise away a poor diet…
- If you feel sluggish because of what you’ve eaten (such as too much fat), you won’t even want to exercise. You’re much more likely to reach for the TV remote control and slump there in front of the box. It’s a vicious circle.
- To give it your all at the gym, you need maximum energy. That comes from eating a healthy and balanced diet every day: plenty of fruit and vegetables and much less of the stuff just mentioned that’s found in pizzas and pancakes.
- Eating badly means your body’s defence system won’t be as strong. You’re more likely to catch colds and other illnesses that will debilitate you from going to the gym. You’ll get out of the healthy habit and two weeks in bed with the bugs might make you feel as if all the gains you’ve made so far have been lost… Another vicious circle.
- Studies have also proven that as unhealthy eating lowers our defence system it means we’re more likely to get injuries such as stress fractures when we do train.
- If you’re eating too much fatty foods you’ll be unlikely to burn all of it off when you work out at the gym. This means that fat settles on certain areas, the very areas that many of us are aiming to make look better: in men around their waist; in women on their hips and thighs.
That’s not to say there isn’t such a thing as a healthy pancake or pizza. Here’s one to start you off: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/10117/superhealthy-pizza
Enjoy it, and then use the big energy boost it will provide to get down that gym!
