Change Your Perspective: Food Is Fuel, Not A Reward

There is one expression I hear a lot that drives me up a wall: “I worked out so I earned (insert food or beverage choice of dubious nutritional value)”. While calories in and calories out do matter, and the more active you are the more calories you can consume without being in a surplus, the idea that humans need to “earn” their food is anathema to me, particularly when we use that concept to justify eating something that we want but know isn’t the best food choice. If we want to eat something and make a conscious and deliberate choice to eat it, we shouldn’t have to justify it to ourselves.
Instead, I prefer to think of food as fuel. Think about a car for a minute. If you drive a car at a steady average pace under normal conditions, it will burn gas at a certain rate, and you will need to keep refueling it at a certain rate to keep it going. The further or faster you drive it, the more fuel it will use. If you load it up or tow something with it, it will burn fuel at a faster rate and need to be filled up more frequently. If you drive more slowly or for a shorter distance, you need less gas and won’t need to refuel as often.
Grossly oversimplified, the normal human metabolism works in much the same way. If your activity or exertion level increases, you will need more fuel. If either decrease, you need less. In short, on the days where you are lifting, carrying, running, or whatever it is that you enjoy doing for moderate to intense exercise, you will need more fuel.
Let’s go back to the car analogy for a minute. Think of the human body as one of those fancy cars that requires 93 octane or higher gasoline. If you fill it with the wrong octane, the car doesn’t run very well. It will shudder, make funny noises, and generally make its displeasure known. Whole foods are premium gas, and processed or “junk” foods are 87 octane. If you put the right amount of whole foods into your body, your engine purrs. If you put the wrong amount in, or if you put the wrong fuel in, you’re not going to get peak performance. Is it okay to use a different fuel sometimes? Sure, but the more you do it, the worse your performance will be.