Is Cardio Helping or Hurting Your Weight Loss Goal? Different Diet Inputs and the Outputs they create.

In this episode, we cover how much cardio is too much cardio and how it can impact your progress. If any of my episodes have helped you, please leave a review! 

Transcript

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Hello, beautiful people. And welcome back to the show. Today I want to talk about cardio. Cardio is something that is, I feel like such a baseline of health and fitness. Like everyone wants to get in shape. So, What do they do? They, I'm going to start running. I'm going to start, you know, going on my bike every day. Cardio is this entry point that I think is amazing because number one, it's free. Number two, it doesn't take very long. And number three, it's good for you. All of those things acknowledged. People, I think sabotage their goals with cardio completely unknowingly and I want to talk about how that happens and why that happens. The first thing I typically see when someone is not reaching their goals, keep in mind that that's the scenario we're talking about here. So it's not someone that, you know, added in a little bit of cardio and it went exactly how they wanted it to, and nothing's wrong. You don't fix what isn't broken. You don't have to fix what isn't broken. I'm talking about people we'll add in cardio. And then they find that either it's so much harder to stick to their diet, like the diet that they're supposed to be following or whatever it is, the amount of calories. Or on the other end, they're not sure why they still don't have the results they were looking for. So let's talk about why the fuck that happens. Like, why is this exercise that exercise equals good, right? Like why is it any more complex than that? And at a baseline level reasonably, it's not, it's not that different. So I want to start with a story actually about one of my clients that I had worked with for a really long time. I worked with this particular individual from the time that they were in college in their last year. And then about three or four years into like being an adult, like a real adult. As they sort of left that college life life happened. They started getting busy. Most people have a hard time making that transition in health and fitness, because now you're working maybe nine to five, instead of having classes kind of an hour here and there throughout the day, you are no longer walking to class. You're no longer going out. And, you know, with your friends walking around, like all of those things just disappear. And all of a sudden you're left with all of those calories that are no longer being burned and you have to figure out how to manage it. and that's really, really difficult. So as this individual transition from college to post-college life, I could not figure out for the life of me, why he couldn't stick to the plan. I never had a problem with this person. This person had never, had issues with these certain things that were now popping up, which happens to everyone. By the way, you are not going to find things that are just magic forever. That never have to be adjusted. Like life is very dynamic. We cannot make a plan and stick to it and never think we're going to have to adjust to it, especially when it comes to what we eat. As we went through and I could not figure out why this person was suddenly having such a compliance issue when it really had never been the case. And that is a little bit more challenging, that compliance issue right off the bat, usually when a client comes and sees me, they're coming to see me because they have a compliance issue anyway, like I'm usually not the first thing people try. Usually my person is coming to me because they've tried other things and they haven't worked. So the person is coming to me with what is a compliance issue, whether they were just trying to follow a shitty plan and compliance was kind of an unrealistic standard. Anyway, that's a whole nother conversation, but they're coming to me with that issue in mind. When someone kind of comes through all of that goes past that in their journey and they learn the basics and they get everything implemented. Going back to a place where compliance as a very baseline issue. Pops back up. Isn't the most common thing. Usually I do not see many people have a compliance issue. After they've kind of learned all the basics and established everything and everything's already in place. That's usually the easiest time. And when people are actually the most lax and kind of effortlessly hitting that 85 to 90% accuracy of where they'd like to be each day, Not really killing themselves to do it, not really taking over their life. It just flows a little bit easier when these other things are set up. That wasn't the case. I got on the phone with him. I couldn't figure it out. We were going through everything. I was like, okay. So like, tell me about your gym routine. Like, how is the gym and feeling like I was like, does he like, feel like shit and maybe he's over eating because like, he just is like too tired. Love and behold come to find out. This person was doing excessive cardio, like 90 minutes to two hours. A day at a minimum. And lifting weights. Wow, that person's incredible. No, and that is, I get it. It's amazing that his commitment level was there. Like that's great. That's very admirable, but what he didn't realize. And what, I don't think a lot of people realize. Is this amount of exercise. Is just stimulating the shit. Out of your appetite. His body was just starving. Like he was just hungry. Like he was just really hungry. And that is what I want to dive into is why that happens. This overexercise and can't figure out why I can't stick to a diet thing is not just with cardio. It's just where I see it the most often. I think it's harder to do other things in an overdone way, when you live a normal life. But cardio is one of those things. People definitely overdue and they don't mean to, or even know they're doing it. When you do that much cardio, essentially, what is happening is your body is clocking and realizing that you have an increased caloric burn rate. You are pumping your blood faster, breathing faster, using energy sources, all of those things. After that cardio stops for the most part, that intensity is over. However, your body going into that state is very good for you in the long run but when you are consistently in that state of high respiration, high blood output your heart's beating fast, you are doing all of these things and your body's synchronizing all of these activities to basically allow you to raise your intensity and run. Once you come down from that, if you're doing it excessively, your body clocks that to. It says we are having these periods of time or we're burning massively more calories than we normally do. And that's happening more often. We have to eat more. If your body could verbalize that, that's what it would say is happening. It's obviously more complex than that. It's not the simplest thing to just kind of lay out, but your hormones, how tired you are, how much you fidget, how much you walk around when you're on the phone, your body's going to save calories to help you survive. If you have an extreme difference in how many calories you're taking in and how many calories you're burning. It's another reason that I have people diet as high as possible for as long as possible. And eat enough that yes, they're still losing weight, but we're eating as much as possible while still losing weight. Unfortunately evolution is always going to win. If you are giving your body no calories, it is going to motivate you extremely fucking effectively to ensure that you survive. If you are not giving your body a normal amount of calories and you do that for a consistent amount of time, and you're doing all of this cardio and you're just ripping your body apart, trying to support that amount of activity. And you're not feeding it by get sick your shit at some point, like it gets over it, it starts conserving in other ways, and you are not going to win against that what are we doing? Why don't we just understand how this is working? Your body now thinks that it's in a state of survival. So what's it going to do? It's going to do things that in times of survival, it needs to do, it needs to preserve food and energy and make sure that you have enough. You know, fat on your body. So what's it going to do? Eat more higher palatable foods, get more in, in one meal, all of these things, you're just natural signals that your body has been made over thousands of years to produce and motivate you correctly to survive. Not to be the hottest person, that pool party, like your body's perspective is very different than yours. So what if cardio is working and your appetite hasn't increased crazily and you are actually well on your way to your goals. You're losing weight, your, this is going in the right direction. And then you sort of reached the amount of weight you wanted to lose, and you kind of look in the mirror. So many people at this very point in time. Are like, what the fuck? what the fuck happened? I'm supposed to be fucking jacked. Until they're not. The excessive cardio plus no resistance training. Usually everybody's different. Everybody wants their body to look different ways. I think your body should look exactly how you want it to look. The issue arises when you arrive at the destination and it's not where you thought you were going to be, and you're pissed. Why don't I look the way I thought I was going to look? Biggest thing I usually see is because there's no muscle base to reveal. So they kind of think about chipping away at the outside of the statue, but if you start chipping away and there's no Michelangelo, abs. Is underneath. Fortunately, you're just going to have your skin and your bones and your organs and your normal parts with not much shape, tone, whatever you want to call it to it. By building a muscle base. Once we lose that fat that's on top of the muscle base, we reveal that shape that I think a lot of people are looking for. And I don't think a lot of people actually understand. That just doing cardio. Doesn't get you that body. You have to reveal something underneath and the way to reveal something or have something to reveal is to resistance, train in some capacity. And with that, if you have more muscle mass, you are going to burn more calories just by existing. Then, if you weigh the same amount, but you had less muscle and more fat mass, you're more muscular self is going to cost more calories just to exist and walk around and make sure that your brain functions in your heart's pumping blood. Those things are the bulk of what your calories are actually used for throughout the day. Your workout is such a small percentage of your actual calories burned. That's why you may not burn as many calories in resistance training, but most people find it contributes to their goals. Much more effectively because number one, it's not as fucking hard. Number two, you're not on a hamster wheel of death, staring at a gym wall, which I like it's terrible. Like I. The cardio section of the gym is so dystopian. If you actually look at it, it's bananas. Then the last part of this is that because you have more muscle mass and you are burning more calories at rest, it becomes much easier to maintain that busy week if by doing nothing differently, other than adding more muscle mass to your frame, you now have 2, 3, 4, 500 calories, more wiggle room to eat daily without gaining any weight or any fat or whatever you want to say. That's a big deal. That's an entire week of vacation that normally you'd come back. The scale is higher and you're pissed. And that doesn't happen anymore to have that wiggle room you've built that wiggle room. So this has been fairly abstract so far. I want to kind of get, what do I actually fucking mean? Like get to the point. I believe. Personally, and from what I've seen. Most people with more stereotypical average goals of, I want to look good naked. I want to be able to see some muscle tone and I don't want to be fucking miserable. 24 7 outside of those things. Super doable. It's nothing crazy. Most of the people I just described are going to get the most out of doing three, four resistance training sessions each week. Weights resistance bands, something where they're being challenged more and more over time, something that is progressive. With that some cardio thrown in there. Absolutely. Cardio is not bad for you. Cardio is not bad for your health. Cardio is not going to make you gain weight. That is not the point of this episode. The point of the episode is to understand how to inject cardio into your routine in the most effective ways and not slaving away on a hamster wheel. Really confused as to why you're not getting results. If you combine those two things, some resistance training, some cardio every week in a super reasonable format. And you can maintain that for 10 years, you will look better than 98% of your friends. I fucking promise you. It sounds too reasonable to be the answer, but it is, that would be most people's ideal ish routine with some tweaks here and there, depending on your actual needs and the more specific parts of your goal. I also believe that instead of doing specific cardio, some things that I believe work a lot better than that, and also feel less miserable the whole entire time. Active habits. Huge. If you can make it so that daily, your life involves a lot of moving around. I am extremely lucky because I don't think about my step count and it's one of the things I preach and care about the most. Like I literally, I'm not even wearing a wearable right now. Y because I hit 10,000 steps. Every single day, very, very easily. My job I'm up around. I'm going to do errands I'm with a client. I'm doing whatever it is, but I'm active and I'm not seated at a desk. I can get 15 to 20,000 steps in a day and it's not hard for me.. That is not the case for everybody. A lot of people unfortunately, are stuck somewhere for a period of their day for work or school, whatever it is. If that is the case for you. Anywhere anywhere you can build in an active habit. It's life changing. It adds up so incredibly quickly, if you can get in the habit of every day at lunch, instead of huddling in the corner with your favorite coworker and talking shit on your other coworkers. Why don't you talk shit on a walk? Every day at lunch. Would it be that hard? Well, how would I eat my lunch? Okay. Switch to a sandwich. You can walk and eat a sandwich like these things, if you actually want to do them are not that challenging. I understand. I just fucking told you how easy it is for me to have those active habits. It is for a lot of you going to be way more difficult than I just described. And I understand that however, there is something you can do. Through your day that you do daily, that you can make more active than it is. And just tweaking. That is a huge step in the right direction, especially if you're doing it daily. I think that's the missing piece here. If you do something every single day. Imagine if you squished all of those things together. So if you take an extra 30 minute walk every single day at lunch, now that actually added up throughout a year, are you seeing like, it's insane. It's insurmountable how much this and it's compounding too. It's not just the amounts of walks that you did squished together. It's also everything that came along with that. And how that built on itself. As you got more in shape, maybe you walked faster. All of those things. The other thing, I think that people have a lot more control over than they exercise control over is the way your diet actually supports your body composition. And the exercise you're doing. Say it's not typical situation that we described, if in this situation, this person has added in cardio. They're looking to, you know, tone up that's everyone's goal. I just want to be a little more toned and toned doesn't really mean anything, but we all understand what that means. Toned me and I want to see my muscles and I don't want to see as much fat that's literally all it means. And how that is achieved. Completely depends on where the person starts. If the person is starting very, very thin and they don't have a lot of muscle on them and they want to get toned. That person doesn't need to go into a calorie deficit. That person needs to increase their protein, increase their resistance training. And that is going to push them to a circles. If a person is very overweight and wants to get toned, they do have to go into a calorie deficit, but the protein and the resistance training not stays the same. Most people will fuck with their exercise routine until the cows come home, but they will not change their diet. And unfortunately, Aesthetic results are highly dependent on your diet. And unfortunately it's also dependent on doing the right type of diet for what you want. The constants, we talked about getting resistance training in increasing your protein. Those things are exactly what you need to do. Plus some sort of caloric, probably total adjustment in some way, shape or form that pushes you in the direction you need to go. The issue is that once people understand that that information is not, I would say common knowledge, maybe at this point, I don't think that most people know the basics of getting to the body that they want. I don't know that this most people even fucking care, but I assume that's not you. If you're listening to this show. So. The missing piece is not knowledge. It's not the exercise routine. It's not the extra set you did or did not do. It's doing it for ever. And for years on end and people have this idea that they're going to reach some destination. And you're not, and that's so shitty if that's what you're expecting, because nothing ever comes of it. It's like expecting a surprise and waiting around all day and no one shows up like it's so demoralizing. I don't want you to wait around for something that isn't coming. I want you to understand why it is or is not working because it's not coming. It's either. Am I doing it or am I not doing it? You don't win. The point of the game is not to win. The point of the game is to continue participating in the game. You can only lose if you quit. And I say that to people all the time, like there's no bandwagon, you didn't fall off a band mining. Cause the bandwagon doesn't exist. That's for sports teams that have really good and then really bad seasons. There's no bandwagon of caring about yourself. You cannot fail unless you go. I don't give a fuck. I'm not going to put any effort towards my own health and wellness whatsoever. That's when you fail. That's it. Eating three bowls of ice cream that's not a failure. That's literally just life. People are so hard on themselves. If you set yourself up to feel like every time you're not perfect, you failed. You're going to feel like a failure. You don't have to feel like a failure this whole time. I want you to be relaxed enough about this, that you understand that there is no fucking it up because there's no. Situation in which tomorrow you're not going to try your best for that day. Again. All or nothing has just never worked. All or nothing is so tough because it is my entire personality issue. Like it is my biggest red flag. I am so all or nothing. And every single thing that I am now, not all or nothing about has been so intentional. It is so fucking hard to not be all or nothing about things. Especially things you're emotionally invested in and anyway, so really, really, really take a step back. How consistent have you actually been not how consistent would you like to have been if your grandma's cousins hamster didn't die and then, oh, we'll work popped up. How consistent have you actually been? That's it. Don't increase your cardio to two hours every single day. Don't start doing crazy shit. Changing the plan, changing your calories, changing what workout you do. Just do normal, healthy shit. Every day, every day, don't don't, don't not do a day of it. If you're literally in The Bahamas sipping on a drink and you don't care and you're not moving and you're not working out great. Get a water on the side, do something to give a shit. And that's it. It does not have to be more complex than that. It doesn't have to be more extreme than that coming from somebody who so understands all or nothing. Just start noticing it. You will notice how crazy we drive ourselves. What is your self-talk like in those situations, what are you actually running through in your head? We make these things so much bigger than they are the point of this episode. I hope that you got is that driving yourself into the ground, doing cardio, switching things up and trying to figure out the most optimal. And this is not the point. Consistency is going to beat it every single time. Every single time consistency is going to beat someone that is all in for two weeks and then out for 10. Do less. Do fucking less do way less. You will be happier. You'll probably end up with better results and you won't lose your shit in the meantime. If you enjoyed this episode and you would like to leave me a review, that is how I am measuring. If I can help simplify health and fitness for 1 million people, it would mean the world to me. And I will see you guys. And the next one.