out-exercising a bad diet

I think it depends on the individual. I definitely can't. I have to eat good, healthy foods, for the most part. My ex husband could eat 6000 calories of crap, McDonalds, ring dings, chips, beer, pizza, etc., and he had next to no body fat at 245 pounds.

If I think about what I was eating before I started counting calories, or even write down what I eat on a particularly bad day. it might come to 3500 or 4000 calories. Now imagine eating that kind of diet day after day, week after week. There is no way you could burn off that calorie surplus, no matter how much you do. The most I've ever burned in a day is 2000 calories (a 3 hour 15 mile run). That is a once a week activity, not a daily one.

So you can compensate for an extra 500 calories now and then - most of your workouts should burn 300-500 calories. But you can't burn off 2000 extra calories per day, every day, unless you are an elite athlete. That's how I think of the expression.

Answer plain and simple NO. Goggle it, there are so many articles on that.

http://kbandstraining.com/burn-calories-you-cant-out-train-a-bad-diet/

"The general population that is serious about exercising spends approximately 6-8 hours working out per week. This most likely will not cover the amount of calories taken in for a person who eats whatever they want whenever they want. A great exercise workout program works if it does not have to go against an unhealthy diet. This is why you can’t out-train a bad diet. It is so important to know what to eat, when to eat, and how much to eat. A lifestyle of eating healthy is the way to utilize working out to the fullest. When a person says they can eat what they want because they exercise the body has news for them. The exercise will not offset their excess of calories. Running on a tread mill is great but it will not burn the excess calories of eating half a pizza. In general, people underestimate the actual amount of calories they eat and drink and over estimate the amount of calories they burn during a workout. Unless a person lives a healthy eating lifestyle combined with a regular exercise routine the body will not be able to burn the excess. It takes both. "

If you are doing a huge amount of cardio then it is possible, but it depends how bad your definition of "bad" diet is.

When I was doing 14-20 hours of cardio per week I "got away with" a pretty crap diet and stayed lean. But the overexercising caused me to start peeing blood, so that probably indicates you shouldn't try and out-exercise a bad diet.

The only reason I don't trust out-eating your diet is that I don't believe that you get an accurate read on how many calories you burn in many cases. Sure, there are ways to be more precise, but I see people on these forums insist they burn 1000 calories in an hour of exercise. I'm just not buying it. If you overestimate exercise calories, you aren't at as big of a deficit as you think you are. I'm sure this way of weight loss works for some people, I just don't personally trust that the numbers come out right according to the database of calories burned during exercise.

This is why it's important to invest in an HRM! I only started eating back my calories once I got my monitor and felt more like I could trust what I was burning.

OP, from your post it seems like you have things under control and are mindful of what you eat and how much you're taking in vs. output.
That said, this is coming from a semi-former "bad dieter". I lost weight a couple of years ago eating donuts and fast food. My cal intake was less then my output and I lost 30 lbs. This time around, I decided to focus on health a little more and in the beginning focused on one thing. Protein. I shot for 100gs of Protein a day.

What I learned from that and am still working on (because I still eat fast food a couple days a week) is that it is pretty difficult to get that number and eat crap food. So I'm making progress in the "bad diet" area. Just sharing because that is something that's helping me.

That said. You can lose weight on a "bad diet". I'm proof. It really is calories in vs. calories out. But if you are working out and trying to have enough energy for a good burn and keep as much muscle as possible, the people on MFP are very right when they say, you can eat what you want, just make sure it hits your macros and are eating at a deficit if you're trying to lose.

Thank you for sharing - that sounds like a great way to approach things (focusing on macros instead of just calories alone). I do follow this most of the time but as I mentioned, a couple of days a week I go over my calorie allowance and try to make it up in the gym. (all in all a difficult issue to tackle because the overeating is mostly emotional).

I suppose I just want reassurance that when I do overeat slightly and then do summon the willpower to do extra exercise, there is actually some point to it.

If the question is "can I recover a bit of over eating by doing extra time in the gym?", the answer is a definite yes!!

It should be: You can't out exercise a bad diet* followed by a paragraph of fine print. In general, you really can't out exercise a bad diet, day after day. However, if it is not a daily occurance, and know how many calories you went over your deficit, AND you have a HRM, you can hit the gym/treadmill/whatever and burn off the damage.

Example: I've been PMSing and cramping and craving crap for a few days, and finally caved last night. Half a cup of Trader Joe's choc chip mint ice cream put me 320 calories in the red, so I strapped on my HRM and hopped on my elliptical for an hour a twelve minutes of sweat in my fat burning zone... while watching Orange Is The New Black!

Short answer: just because you can out exercise a bad diet doesn't mean you should make it a habit.