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Exercise keeps you strong, shapes your physique, and has a ton of health benefits. But one thing exercise doesn't do is burn a ton of calories. Which is unfortunate, because that's the reason anyone bothers to exercise. And even the most vigorous exercise session will struggle to burn a substantial amount of calories. No matter what your smart-watch says.
Unfortunately, this concept is still foreign to many people.
The current consensus that many of my clients and fellow gym-goes have is that if you exercise, you can eat whatever you want! But anyone who has tried to out-exercise a bad diet knows that strategy doesn't work. It just leaves you frustrated, tired, injured, and hungry for bad food.
Why do you exercise?
If you're exercising for your health, your mind, or athletic performance, then by all means keep going! But if you're exercising to lose weight, chances are you're doing it wrong.
While exercise contributes to a weight loss program, it burns significantly less overall calories than you'd think. If you want to tone up, get rid of arm flab, or see your abs, you have to start with your diet. Exercise is just a bonus.
There are of course, many studies to support this. Two separate studies, one from Texas and one from Oklahoma, both found that participants who exercised without changing their diets averaged around 1.5 lbs of fat loss for the duration of the studies. Each study was longer than a few months, so there was enough potential to lose more.
This means that, with all diets being equal, exercising 5-6 hours per week with a personal trainer only caused a 1.5 pound weight change.
That's a huge bummer.
This is why it's frustrating for so many people who are exercising for the sake of weight loss, but are left feeling tired, injured, and demoralized. On the other hand, the scale isn't going up, which is good, but it means the exercise is masking a bad diet. Your progress could be much more.
I see this in 8 out of 10 of my clients.
I do want to make it clear that I'm talking about people with 10 or more pounds of fat to lose. The leaner you are, the more important exercise becomes to create a physique change.
Take A Road Trip
To illustrate my point, let's picture a long, cross-country road trip. This trip will be full of lane changes, wrong turns, and pit stops. But if you do things right, you'll eventually get there. A few things will make this trip easier:
1) Knowing the destination.
2) Having a GPS that updates with each turn.
3) Some good music or company to ride with.
No matter where you're going, though, you have to press the gas pedal.
In this analogy, your diet is the gas pedal and your exercise program is the steering wheel. You can turn any direction you want (fat loss, strength, build muscle), but if you're not feeding yourself correctly you'll never arrive.
So stop trying to out-exercise your diet. Monitor your intake, make healthy food choices, and track your progress along the way. If things aren't changing, I'm willing to bet your nutrition sucks.
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