According to Mark Sisson - If you are looking to lose FAT, exercise is not the most effective way to lose weight. Say What?? If your goal is to lose fat, doing a lot of cardio like running or biking may actually cause you to gain weight. The theory is that heavy carido work can cause you to overcompensate eating when you finish working out and this is when your body is craving carbs and when you are more likely to binge on carbs. Humm, this may be one of my problems.
80% of weight loss comes from your DIET.
Time for a little experiment.
Guilty as charged of basing too much of my exercise on cardio work. Presently, I am stuck at 205 pounds. I exercise 5 times a week and on most of those days do a primarily cardio based workout. I run 5-6 miles, row on the ergometer, or take a spinning class at the gym. I also eat like I did when I was running ultramarathons. I justify what I eat because I eat a pretty “clean” diet overall. Lots of veggies, fruit, nuts, fish and meat, but if I really look at what I eat closely – P.S. I am eating too many carbohydrates. My carbs are coming from “good” sources, mostly whole grains, etc. and that has been making me think that I can’t be getting too many carbs in my diet.
I don’t feel like I am fat, I actually feel like I am in pretty good shape, but I want to lose 10 pounds and I really don’t believe that I need to exercise more if I want to lose that weight. I believe that I can cut out some more of the carbs in my diet, and exercise less, and still lose the weight I want to lose.
So – I am going to closely monitor my carbs for the next month and see how things go. I will use fitday to keep track of carbs and make adjustments as I go. On the exercise side – I am going to do 2 days of HIIT, which will consist fo rowing on the ergometer for 500 meters, 20 sit ups & 20 push ups (5 rounds total). I may run once a week and the rest of my workouts will be bodyweight based (push-ups, sit ups, handstands, kettlebells, pull-ups, squats)
I will let you know how it goes for me and let me know if you feel the same way, or have had any experience with this yourself.
Burpee Challenge
Wednesday 10 burpees (55 total)
6 responses so far ↓
Mark Sisson // September 10, 2008 at 7:04 pm |
Chris -
Thanks for the link. It is appreciated.
And good luck with the experiment. You definitely have the right idea. Let me know how it goes for you, and if you need any advice hit me up with a comment or email.
Cheers!
rose // September 11, 2008 at 2:48 pm |
i skipped yesterday and made it up today. i definitely learned my lesson about taking a day off. i told chris that i didn’t think this whole burpee thing was any big deal. it’s way harder than i thought. i’m wrong again!!
chris // September 11, 2008 at 3:28 pm |
I am making up yesterday and today too. 21 burpees. It’s hard, but think about if you skip say day 60. That would be 121 the next day.
Mark – thanks for all of the info. I am going to tweek my food for a while using fit day and then I will hit you up for some advise.
sue // September 12, 2008 at 4:42 pm |
I too missed the other day so I was at 21 yesterday. I thought it will definitely suck if I miss later, I will be more diligent. 1 week 4 days of South Beach (unfortunately I had a couple screw ups) I’ve lost 4 pounds. So Chris let me know how the experiment works! Now with work, my time is even less!
tom // September 13, 2008 at 10:10 am |
Chris,
A few points to bear in mind when thinking about how diet and exercise together affect weight loss;
- vast majority of research shows that diet alone is ineffective in contributing to large and sustained changes in body composition
- when using exercise to cause weight loss, there really is no magic “fat burning zone” of light to moderate intensity aerobic exercise; it’s all about the calories burned, the more calories you burn per workout and per week the more likely you are to create the caloric deficit needed to lose weight; therefore using higher intensity exercise like the circuit training you described will likely be more effective in creating the calorie deficit and increasing your resting metabolic rate
- lastly as you know even though many people are eating healthy they tend to eat far too many carbs, even the complex carbs that have low glycemic indices that are “better” for us so I think you are on the right track there
- So, I would suggest you are on the right track in monitoring the carbs and bumping the intensity of some of your exercise sessions up; I think you’ll see some positive changes in a few weeks
chris // September 13, 2008 at 11:10 am |
Tommo,
Right on. I think that in my case, I am getting enough exercise. I have been using fitday to look at my calories and carbs that I am eating, and I have found 2 significant things in my case.
1. I am eating too many overall calories in a day.
2. I am eating too many carbs.
What is funny for me is that until I started recording this, I didn’t think that I was consuming too many calories. I think that part of this is ignorance on my part, but a bigger part is that I am doing a fair amount of exercise and in my head it is giving me the “o.k.” to eat as much as I want because of the work I am doing.
I also do notice that on days that my workout is a cardio based workout – 10k run, 10,000 meter row, etc. I am craving carbs during the day. I should say that, if I go for them first, I crave them the rest of the day. If I eat a more protein based meal, I crave them less during the day.
Lastly – I agree that diet alone will not change your body composition and is not in itself a good way to lose weight. My experience is that many clients that I work with have pretty good diets overall, but do little to no exercise.