Coaches Corner: Diet vs Exercise Mild Rant of a Trainer/Coach: “I am not losing fat! This isn’t working!” ” I need more cardio” “I need to get bigger” “What do I do to get rid of this?” 
A great misconception that many people have is that they believe that their exercise program, which is sometimes very minimal, will somehow make up for the way they eat. Exercise if often used as an excuse by individuals to eat whatever they want because they think their exercise offsets the extra calories consumed. It is not uncommon for a client to state, ‘I’m training hard but not losing any weight’. In some instances, depending on how bad their diet is, they may even continue to gain weight at a slower rate. Then when you start to discuss their eating, you soon realize why. Eating enough of the right foods is not only important for weight loss but also refuelling and keeping you healthy when you are training hard. Nutrition forms the foundation for pretty much all of our health – and that includes body composition. No matter how much you work out, if you are eating the wrong foods, it will be very difficult to see optimum results for either health, fitness or body composition. Focus on health as a priority, however, then ideal body-composition will usually follow. So if you are complaining about not losing fat….are you eating like you are trying to or are you pounding down 5 corona-ritas a weekend and eating a 95% carb diet? 
I’ve been in the fitness industry for 12 years now, have personally trained thousands of people, and have advised thousands more. I’ve worked with pro athletes, natural bodybuilders, fitness models, busy professionals, entrepreneurs, strippers, and crazy people alike. There has been only one irrefutable trend. The clients who used diet as their primary weapon in the war on fat loss were the ones who obtained the best results. My philosophy is you will more efficiently improve your APPEARANCE by using your diet to burn off most body fat, and then using your formal CrossFit sessions to focus on training in order to build muscle and shape the body. Its all about aligning the training program with the training goal. 
The calories burned during an exercise session are relatively small compared to the amount burned the other 23 hours of the day during the recovery process (at rest). Most fat burning occurs between training sessions, not during. 
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