I lost over 100 lbs in 1 year and maintained my muscle in the process! If you lose weight you must maintain muscle or you will damage your metabolism plateau and rebound!
That’s why I say stop doing cardio to lose weight!!!”
JUMP TO THE END FOR THE TLDR
Most people that are trying to get healthy and lose weight are told to exercise and cut your calories. This is the top advice from most doctors and old school fitness influencers. Unfortunately it does not work and usually results in a rebound weight gain exceeding the original weight before the intervention!!
BUT WHY!!!
“In the economics of life, calories are the currency.” Herman Pontzer Burn
In the book Burn by Herman Pontzer we learn that when the body is presented with daily cardiovascular activity it will quickly adjust to this calorie expenditure and toggle down other life processes. He illustrated this by experimenting with a hunter gatherer tribe and compared their calorie expenditure with that of an office employee. Magically on average they burn the same amount of calories in spite of the loads of additional expenditure during the day of the hunter gatherer.
From this research we learn that we have a set caloric expenditure that that the body works to keep in tight control. What this means is if we do a cardio workout everyday at first it will be an additional burn of calories but soon it will just be incorporated into your normal expenditure. In addition if you are giving your body less food and expecting it to produce more work it will exacerbate this process. This leads to the common plateau of weight loss that we always hear about. This is the point were you are not able to maintain such low calorie intake and may even slow down your exercise routine in frustration causing the rebound of weight gain. This cycle is damaging to the metabolism but also to the person emotionally.
The body is always expecting a famine so when food is available we eat and store fat. If we put a heavy demand on the body some muscle will be built but most excess energy will store as fat. This is because muscle is costly to the body and it will only grow if a sufficient stimulus is placed on it otherwise it will maintain the least amount possible.
The body is happy to store fat to get ready for the famine until it has too much. Fat cells cause inflammation in the body inflammation in turn leads to cardiovascular diseases, atherosclerosis, metabolic syndrome, and insulin resistance which make it harder to lose weight. So lies the dilemma and the reason people get progressively heavier overtime.
While some people satiate easily and have no issues with weigh gain the majority of the population especially in America are overweight. This is the result of this evolutionary mechanism to survive that is no longer necessary because of the abundance of food that we now have access to at all times.
BUT HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO LOSE WEIGHT?
Now that we understand that it is easy to gain fat because our body wants to survive and its not that easy to gain muscle because our body would rather maintain the least amount possible for that survival lets move on to how to lose fat and maintain muscle mass.
While it is hard to grow muscle once you have it is much easier to maintain it. This is what we take advantage of when cutting weight. outside of genetic factors the our lean muscle mass is most directly responsible for the “speed” of our metabolism. The more muscle mass you have the more calories you will burn in a day. This is why it is so very important to maintain muscle while losing weight. If you do not you will be slowing your metabolism as you lose weight because you will be also losing muscle.
Since the body wants to store fat and maintain only what muscle is necessary. We have to make sure it knows it needs the muscle we have by placing a heavy demand on it while decreasing calories. Cardio workouts do not put that demand on the muscles. That is why when trying to lose weight it is more important to do resistance training instead of cardio.
This is also why we aim to lose only a small amount of weight per week. Going into a a severe calorie deficit will cause loss of both muscle and fat hurting your metabolism. Calories can be tricky because they are inaccurately labeled on foods and we all burn a different amount. This process of finding how many calories you burn can take a few weeks to a month.
Start with a calorie counting app I like Cronometer because it also breaks down your nutrients for the day based on what you input. It will give you a target based on age and other factors. You can set the app to give you a 500 calorie deficit and hit those targets. With a pound of fat being 3500 calories In 7 days you should have lost 1 lb of fat.
You may notice that after the first week you lost 3-7 lbs and think wow this is too much of a deficit but this is not the case. Big fluctuations in weight from day to day that can be seen are based on water retention. The more muscle the wider the fluctuations because muscles stores water. If you eat a low carb diet you will see more vast fluctuations because the carbs convert to glycogen which store water and fill up the muscle. If you eat low carb your muscle will be dehydrated and you will weigh less the next day. Any switch from the SAD or Standard American Diet to an unprocessed diet will result in loss of water weight because SAD is filled with too much sodium and makes us retain water.
Weigh yourself daily and take note of what you ate the day prior, you will notice these fluctuations if you have a day where you eat more processed foods. After a week or two of healthy eating you will get a more accurate picture of actual fat loss. Still it is best to take the average of the week rather than compare day to day. I have a scale that tracks your weigh and other factors based on body impedance it is not very expensive while it is not as accurate as I would like it is good to see trends. If after a few weeks of what is supposed to be a 500 calorie deficit based on the parameters of the app you can check your progress. If you are not losing that is when you need to increase the deficit. If you are losing 1lb a week you are right in the sweet spot of fat loss and muscle retention.
TLDR
If you do cardio everyday it will eventually be expected by your body and incorporated into your set caloric burn.
Lift weights while losing weight to maintain your muscle while losing fat or you will damage your metabolism and regain the weight.
Do not be fooled by water weight.
Unless otherwise noted; All Words written by me not Chat GPT, All images are created by me not Midjourney, All digital assets are owned by me not right click and saved. This article has pictures of products and apps that I use the links are provides.
Links:
Bluetooth Scale
https://www.amazon.com/RENPHO-Bluetooth-Bathroom-Composition-Smartphone/dp/B01N1UX8RW
Calorie nutrient tracker
https://cronometer.com/
Fat cells cause inflammation
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5507106/
Maintain muscle easier than building it
