Pepperoni Pizza 1 – Craig 0 (watch Craig Ballantyne get his butt whooped!)
Well, I admit it. I’m a total dork.
You’ll see why as soon as you watch this video of me racing a (that’s right, I race a pizza)…& I get my butt kicked. All in the name of teaching you an important fat loss lesson!
It’s our first of many episodes in my new online TV show, “Diet vs. Exercise“. The goal is to show you just how much dietary damage you can do in minutes, if not seconds, and just how hard you have to work in order to burn off the calories.
As you’ll learn, and as you probably already know, you simply can’t “Out-train a bad diet”. It’s just not possible and it’s just too darn easy to consume a boatload of calories from our favorite foods in just minutes.
For example, you’ll see Brad Pilon, a guy with a Master’s Degree in Nutrition, absolutely destroy a pizza, consuming about 1100 calories in 3 minutes. And this wasn’t even one of those nasty, greasy, Pizza Hut pizzas. I bet the calorie intake would have been double if he had gone that route.
On the other hand, you can watch me run my brains out at 10.5mph at a 0.5% incline for 3 minutes and you’ll be shocked at just how few calories I burn. (At best, I could have maintained 10mph for 6-7 minutes since I can almost run a 6-minute mile).
Alright, enough talk, more video. Have a laugh at the video here:
Please share this video with everyone, because it really does have a valuable lesson for folks who want to lose fat.
Simply put, even if you ran a marathon, you’d only burn about 2600 calories. But if you ate a greasy pizza and washed it down with a jumbo soda, you’d consume about 2600 calories. In ONE sitting. And you’d still probably eat another 1000 calories over the course of the day with breakfast, lunch, and snacks.
So depending on cardio – or exercise of any type – to overcome your bad diet is a bad, bad, bad idea. It’s hopeless. (Sorry.)
The key to becoming a fat loss success story, of course, is diet. For decades trainers have been throwing out the old catchphrase that “diet is 80% of your results”. Are they right? I dunno. What does it matter if its 51% or 99%, we both know it’s darn important so you have to find the right fat loss diet for your personality.
This might surprise you, but I DO believe in diets. Diets DO work. And I believe that a wide variety of diets can work for fat loss. I know that Brad’s Fasting for Fat Loss program works. I also highly recommend Isabel De Los Rios’ diet program, because it’s as close to my diet as any program out there. 
I know that carb rotation diets will work for people, and you can’t argue that low-carb diets don’t work for some folks, and of course, the South Beach Diet will also work. Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig even work for some, although I’m not a big fan of the packaged food that any of those diets endorse.
That’s why I really like Isabel’s program that focuses on whole, natural foods, and Brad’s program because he teaches you to stop obeying food industry marketing and shows you how to eat real food on an easy to follow schedule.
So those are my two highest recommend fat loss diet programs.
Brad Pilon’s Fasting for Fat Loss program (make sure you follow his plan & don’t overdo it!)
Isabel De Los Rios’ Whole, Natural Food Program
So diet beats exercise, hands down, every time. And we have more proof of that in future episodes (the one where I race a Starbucks Frappucino is interesting…).
Please let me know what other foods you’d like to see me “race” in the future! Post your idea below…
And so if you liked that video…
Just wait till you see the video where I race a burger ‘n’ fries while on the stairclimber,
Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Author, Turbulence Training for Fat Loss