Weight Loss and Calorie Counting
I thought this article was a great read and very relevant to weight loss. For those looking to to lose fat I suggest you read what my buddy Craig Ballantyne, had to say about burning calories and losing fat. You may recognize Craig from men’s health magazine or as the author of the Turbulence Training manuals and website.
If you rely on classic long slow aerobic cardio for weight loss, you probably spend a minimum of 30 minutes on a cardio machine trying to reach your target calories.
But does that work?
I’m sure you know that approximately 1 pound of fat contains 3500 calories, so does burning 500 calories per day on the treadmill cause you to lose 1 pound of fat by the end of the week?
Well, according to science, it should. But if it did, you probably wouldn’t still be reading this article.
Back in the day, I used to write a column on fat loss myths for Men’s Fitness magazine. Here’s a classic weight loss topic I covered.
Myth: I need to burn 500 calories each workout to lose fat.
Truth:
Possibly one of the worst inventions for fat loss was the calorie-counting monitor on treadmills, elliptical machines, and stairmasters.
Because of these, millions of men and women now obsess about the number of calories burned per session. You’ve probably even been one of those people, watching it creep up ever so slowly during a slow-cardio session. All the while knowing that you can wipe out a 30-minute, 300-calorie treadmill session with one fell swoop of the
Krispy Kreme hand.
Too many people are brainwashed into thinking that if they don’t burn 300-500 calories per session, then they won’t lose fat. After all, that is what you’ve been told time and time again in those fluffy fitness/fashion magazines.
The problems with this approach to fat loss are numerous. First off, it’s difficult to say if the calorie counters are even accurate. A story on CBS news showed that cardio machines overestimate calorie burning by up to 20%.
Lables are not always correct either
Next, depending on slow cardio for advanced fat loss is relatively useless and at the very least, inefficient. It takes a long time for you to burn a lot of calories and one study showed that men who only used cardio training for weight loss ended up with a reduced resting metabolism. You are basically undoing the calorie burning by depending only on cardio. On the other hand, guys in the same study that used strength training didn’t suffer a reduced metabolic rate.
So what is the solution to burning fat in a faster, more efficient method? The answer is to use strength and interval training to burn fewer calories in less exercise time, but with a more intense form of exercise.
Your body will burn more calories after exercise (when you use intervals) than it does after you do slow cardio and your metabolism will stay high. Some experts refer to this as the afterburn effect. How do you do intervals? Well, you could sprint for 30 seconds and rest for 90 seconds and repeat that for 6 sets – using the bike preferably or treadmill if you are experienced with it.
Within that short time frame the intervals will cause your muscles to go crazy with activity (I call it a metabolic turbulence). This crazy metabolism boost causes lots of calorie burning after exercise to get your body back to normal. The result is you would
end up burning more fat and more calories in the post-exercise period as your body tries to get things under control.
Now there is one time where you’d want to count calories, but that is when you are counting up and determining how many calories you eat per day. Again, you can wipe out an entire workout’s work in less than a minute simply by eating garbage. Without some structure and discipline to your nutrition, there is nothing that even my
programs can do to help you lose fat.
So exercise nutrition control and interval training. These are the two anti-calorie counting methods that will help you lose fat and get lean.
See for yourself how you can burn fat and build muscle…
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s funny how many women miss out on strength training as a necessary part of a fitness program.
honestly, the only way I ever lost weight (once when I was a pudgy teen – kept off 18 years, and now again, after a cancer scare) is by adding in strength training, and making it a regular part of my routine to keep it off.
One frustration for those who want to lose weight can be that some bodies (raises hand) put on muscle much more quickly in the first few months/weeks of a program than they lose fat, so the scale goes nowhere.
Even with measuring, that weight number not dropping as rapidly as it could (should?) is frustrating.
*smiles*
Heather thanks for the comment, and you are correct.
Weight training is essential to fat loss in the long term. The number on the scale is the last number need to look at, there are better measures of success in your fitness program, even a weight loss program.
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ’0 which is not a hashcash value.