If you’re doing more cardio than ever and your body hasn’t changed or it’s actually gotten worse, this is for you…

I’m absolutely not anti-cardio, it has a ton of benefits.

The issue is when it’s treated as your primary fat loss strategy.

I fell into this trap for years, I remember sitting on my little stationary bike watching tv for hours at a time pedalling away and literally seeing no changes in my body composition.

Since I altered my approach I’ve lost 60 lbs and I’ve kept it off for well over a decade.

Cardio is not giving you the fat loss results that you want for 2 reasons, we’re going to cover them both.

I’m also going to outline exactly what I did personally to lose the weight.

As well as how I help my clients reach their fat loss goals without doing endless amounts of exercise…in many instances no formal exercise at all, let’s dig in…

Reason #1

How many times have you thought…I can afford to eat x, y or z because I exercised today or I earned x, y or z because I got a workout in?

I used to do this constantly and it’s like having the goal of saving money and compensating for saving, by spending.

There’s a big mismatch here because the goal (fat loss) and the compensation (eating more) directly conflict with one another.

 It’s like taking a step forward and then a step back and wondering why you’re still standing in the same place.

Also, we tend to drastically overestimate how many calories that we burn via activity.

And this is partly because a lot of the devices that we use to track energy expended, just aren’t all that accurate.

Simultaneously, we tend to drastically underestimate how many calories that we consume and so we’ve got the perfect storm here.

We have a situation where we’re burning less than we think and we’re eating more than we think.

This is actually how some folks gain body fat when they start exercising, which is unbelievably frustrating.

We see this in runners all the time and they’re especially susceptible because there’s this whole culture around quote unquote ‘fueling’.

Carb gels, bars, gummies…you see folks start running to lose fat and they actually gain it despite increasing their activity levels substantially.

Reason #2

How many times have you thought…I could walk to the coffee shop, park, grocery store, name a place, but I worked out today and so I’ll just drive.

What happens when a lot of folks start exercising more is their NEAT or non-exercise activity thermogenesis goes down.

Which is just a fancy way of saying they move around less outside of the gym, meaning…

Folks oftentimes don’t actually become more active when they start exercising, they just relocate their movement into the gym.

And as a result, there’s very little if any change in their big picture energy expenditure and therefore body composition.

Let’s get to the good stuff, how to begin getting the results that you want…

Step #1

Focus first and foremost on your nutrition, you’ve probably heard it a million times…

Abs are made in the kitchen or it’s 80% diet and 20% exercise.

This is true and almost certainly even conservative, nutrition does the heavy lifting and then some when it comes to fat loss.

I’m not saying don’t exercise, this is just a matter of the right tool for the right job and in terms of losing fat, nutrition is that tool!

Just like you wouldn’t use a screwdriver to hammer in a nail, you don’t want to use exercise on its own for fat loss, simply because it’s not very effective.

This is actually great news because modifying what you eat takes essentially no time, but adding in exercises requires a ton of it meaning.

Focusing on your nutrition gives you better results in less time, that’s awesome!

Step #2

Use your step counts as a gauge to monitor your movement habits more so than your time in the gym.

This is a much better strategy because it accounts for your movement all day long as opposed to just your workouts.

Because if you exercise 3x per week for an hour, that’s great but it’s only 3 hours over the course of an entire week.

Whereas all of your waking hours are accounted for when you use your steps to monitor your big picture activity.

This is what I do personally and this is exactly what I do with my fat loss clients.

Focus on nutrition first and foremost and then supplementing with steps!

Nutrition specifics…

A solid general starting point is to get roughly a gram (ish) of protein per pound of your current bodyweight or goal bodyweight.

We then adjust from there…this is not set in stone, it’s just a place to begin.

Once you set protein, you can fill in the remainder of your calorie intake from carbs and fats based on your personal preferences.

How you feel with certain macronutrient ratios, what fits best with your lifestyle and the list goes on.

I also recommend that the vast majority of your meals are made up of single ingredient whole foods because.

They are a lot more favourable in a fat loss context being that they are so much more filling than processed foods.

And so you can create a calorie deficit which is absolutely required to lose fat, but you don’t even feel hungry!

Not to mention single ingredient whole foods are just far healthier for us.

Movement specifics…

I’d recommend aiming for 10,000 steps per day or 70,000 over the course of the week as a whole.

If you’re a ways off of that target at first, no problem…just slowly and consistently build up.

If you don’t have time for that many steps, that’s okay…just adjust your nutrition accordingly.

If you want to workout on top of walking, even better, but it’s not a must in order to lose fat and get healthy.

Sleep is also a really important fat loss consideration because it sets you up to adhere to your nutrition and movement targets much more effectively…it’s also crucial for health.

So if you’re tired of doing more and more cardio with nothing to show for it, this approach is how I lost the weight and how my clients do too!