You’ve probably done this before: started a diet or wanted to lose some body fat, and your first call to action was to hit the gym and do 100 hours of cardio.
A few weeks go by, and you get sick of it, noticing that you’re doing less and less, up to the point where you do nothing at all.
Here’s the thing! All that cardio is pointless, well, kinda.
If you’ve read my ‘fat loss guide’ (shameless plug), you should know about TDEE, and if you haven’t, you’ve got some homework to do.
TDEE is our total daily energy expenditure, and it’s the amount of calories we burn daily. Our biggest contribution to the calories we burn that we can control is our NEAT – non-exercise activity thermogenesis, making up 15% of our total calories burnt. That is anything we do that isn’t considered exercise, like walking, scratching our head, and so on. Exercise, on the other hand, only accounts for 5% of our total calories burnt.
Let’s also add the fact that we can always consume calories more quickly than we can burn them, hence why I always suggest that nutrition will always play a bigger role in fat loss.
So here’s what I suggest for you to do in the future:
If your goal is fat loss, double down on your nutrition, get in a calorie deficit, increase your protein intake, and look to increase foods that have high nutritional value. Increase your daily steps as you’ll get more from doing that.
Then, focus your training on getting better at the movement, building muscle, building strength, and building general fitness and health. Let’s move away from training to burn calories.
Increasing movement will always be beneficial, and even when your goal is fat loss, you should look to improve your training and the amount of movement you’re doing. Just don’t waste a lot of energy or time focusing on something that only gives you a small return on your goal. It’s about working smarter, not just working harder.
