Hate to break it to you but… cardio exercise is NOT weight loss. Here’s why:
People always come to me with the belief that they just need to add more cardio when the weight loss stalls. This belief is false.
Let’s look at the facts of the cardio – weight loss relationship.
1. You can lose weight while doing cardio, but can also gain weight while doing cardio if you EAT in a SURPLUS.
2. If you are eating in a deficit, do you lose weight without cardio? YES. If you’re eating in deficit with cardio do you lose weight? YES.
If you are asking…..“But Sam. Which one should I do?!” If you have weight loss as your goal — always address your NUTRITION FIRST and add cardio as a bonus. Not the other way around. This will give you sustainable results and allow you to progress consistently.
“Hey everybody! I wanted to deliver a simple message today. My message today is cardiovascular activity or cardio as most call it, does not equal fat loss. Now I know a lot of you are thinking “What? My aunt, my sister, my cousin, my uncle, all of these people have been running and they lose weight. I see it all the time.” That is correct. That can happen. But I’m here to tell you that cardio is not fat loss in every instance. It is not where you should be putting the most of your emphasis on, especially if you are new to resistance training, if you’re new to developing a healthy lifestyle, it is not where you should be putting the majority of your emphasis cardiovascular activity does have a great health benefits to it so I’m not saying you should neglect it completely, but please often what I see is people will start out new fitness. They’re all hyped. They’re getting on the elliptical for 45 minutes. That’s not what you should be doing. That’s not a good use of your time. So I’m going to tell you right now, kind of what we need to be focusing on as you’re starting out and why cardio does not equal fat loss.
So if we look at the equation of fat loss, we know that to lose weight, you have to be in a calorie deficit. So for example, those of you that don’t know what a calorie deficit is… If my baseline level of calories to maintain my current weight was around 2000. And if I ate anything more than 2000, that means I would gain weight. That’d be a calorie surplus, but anything less than 2000 and this has to be consistently over time. If I eat anything less than 2000, let’s say I’m consistently eating 1600. I know over time that I’m going to lose weight and that’s that’s science right there.
So if we look at the equation of cardiovascular activity, it’s very simple. You can lose weight. Yes, doing cardio and being in a calorie deficit, you can lose weight, just being in a calorie deficit. You cannot lose weight if you’re doing cardio and in a calorie surplus. So the main message here is if you’re starting out new focus on your nutrition first, put what matters first. If you’re looking for fat loss, put what matters first, your nutrition, dial that in. Know what your maintenance level of calories is, know how to go below that… and that’s going to get you fat loss, sustainable fat loss over time, far superior than cardiovascular activity alone. Well, that’s my message for today. I hope everybody has a fantastic rest of their day as always, stay strong.”
Hey everyone! It’s Whitney from EarthFIT. So today I want to talk to you about “Eating On The Go”. So just because you’re away from home, doesn’t mean you have to make poor food choices. So the first thing I recommend is be prepared. If you’re meal prepping or you’re focusing a lot on nutrition, you need to prepare your meals. You need to have them ready to go for the day, at the very least. That way we know for your schedule, you have everything you need to hit those targets that you’re doing. Now, say you’re not meal prepping, you’re just trying to eat right, you’ve been working on nutrition: You do want to be prepared. So, a few things you can do is if you know you’re going to be away from home, or you’re not going to be able to eat what you need to eat, you want to bring stuff with you. A few things you can bring with you for snacks are… I like to tell people, bring protein. That’s the easiest way to get good nutrition is having a good amount of protein. And you can do that through like a protein shake. You can do that through hard boiled eggs. You can do that through some chicken breast. You can do that through tuna. There’s a lot of easy protein snacks that you can bring with you on the go. If you do a protein shake, you might want to have a bottle or something – a shaker, something easy where you don’t even need a ball. You can get one that has a top that you can mix a protein already. I like to use this one because it also has at the bottom, a separate pouch that you can keep things dry. Sometimes I’ll put nuts in there depending on what my macros are for the day. If I need some fats, those are some options.
Now say last resort, you are out, you don’t have any snacks with you… What can you do? So you have a few options. I like to give people is: (1) You can completely fast. Just because you’re feeling hungry doesn’t mean you need to eat. Sometimes you’ll do better if you don’t eat anything at all, you wait so you’re in a place where you can have a proper meal and you can make sure you’re staying on track with nutrition. A little hunger is not going to kill anybody. That being said, if you have diabetes or something where you do need to monitor blood sugar, that’s a different story. But for most people you can fast. Now, say you can’t fast and you’re like, “I really need something.” I recommend try starting drinking some water first, having some water. Sometimes people think they’re hungry, but really they’re dehydrated.
I know for me personally, if I’m feeling like I want fruit to eat, it’s typically the water in the fruit that I’m craving. It’s not actually food that I want. Now, worst comes to worst, you don’t have any options, you need to have something to eat. I like to think the worst case scenario is you go to a gas station. So, if you can find something healthy to eat it at a gas station, you can pretty much find it anywhere. Whether it’s a grocery store, a restaurant, your gas station is going to be the bottom of the barrel, for instance. So I’ve actually gone to a gas station today to show you some options that you can have that’ll work. And I’ll go over with those with you now.
“Good morning, everybody! Thank you for tuning in to today’s Q and A, and today’s Q and A, I’m going to go over how you can stay on track throughout the holiday season without gaining a bunch of weight and still being able to enjoy your family favorite foods.
Before we get into that though, I do have a huge, huge, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to so many of you that have been giving me support, asking me questions, showing me love. I really appreciate that. So you know who you are. Thank you to all of you. For all those questions I mean keep coming, I do have to apologize. It’s been about two weeks since I’ve gotten to the Q and A videos, The team and I were out of the office and then we’ve been working on very diligently and hard on special programs for clients in gym at EarthFIT here in South Carolina, and then across the country, the clients we coach remotely to bring them value, make sure they’re staying on track throughout the holidays as well. So if you have any questions, please make sure you’re dropping them in the comments below you’re messaging me on Facebook or shoot me an email. I’ll either answer them directly to you right then and there, or I’ll make a video if it’s more popular topic like today’s topic.
So today’s topic usually gets presented to me in a variety of ways, but more or less it’s along the lines of, “Hey Sam, between December and February, I gained about 30 pounds. How can I not do that? But also I want to be able to enjoy the holiday season. I want to be able to have some of those nice sweet treats on my favorite holidays and enjoy, actually enjoy the time that I have with my family. How can I do all of that? Is it even possible?” So I’m going to give you a few simple steps on what to do so you can have both those things. You have that health and wellness as you’d like and deserve, and you can have those treats that you like.
So step number (1), We have to build momentum rolling into the holidays. What I mean by momentum is, I mean our health and fitness momentum. We want to be in some of the best shape that we can be. Now, some of you may be thinking I haven’t done anything. Um, Thanksgiving just happened since then, I’ve been sitting on the couch. I’m just going to wait till New Years’ do not do that. Okay? A lot of people will do that and that’s where they access body fat goes on. If you can actually get up, start moving, even if you’re just starting your start from square one, you worked out in 20 years. If you start getting that momentum rolling for a couple of weeks, going into the holidays, that is going to mitigate a lot of the fat gain that you have throughout the holidays. And it’s going to keep you a little bit more focused throughout the holidays, which in turn will again, mitigate all the fattening that you have throughout the holidays and some of the damage that you’ve done through that. So step number one, Prepare yourself physically. So get up, start drinking more water, walking. If you’re not sure if you are starting from step one, you have no idea what to do. You can reach out to me and we can help you out. Or if you need to plan, we can help you out there. Okay… on how to get through those specifically with your fitness.
Step number (2), Know that there’s going to be stress, okay. There should be a lot of stress. And what stress will do to people is causing them to act, overeat. So going into the holidays, where there is going to be lots of stress, let’s focus on doing activities that de-stress us, that are healthy for us. So for some people that may be reading, it could be going fishing, things like that. We also want to make sure we’re focusing on our sleep during this time, because we don’t want that tip to compound and make us more stressed out, right? Because there’s gonna be things, family situations, loss of loved ones, things are gonna come up around the holidays that you know, really can bother us and can stress us out. Prepare for that, know that it’s coming and plan accordingly. Okay. If you prepare a little bit, you’re going to be a lot less stressed. So step number one was to prepare your body physically. Step number two is you need to kind of prepare our mind as well for the stress that’s coming.
Step number (3), When the holidays actually approached that big day comes, how should you eat? What should you do? Just follow this simple framework. Okay? Eat your protein sources. So your meats, things like that in the morning with your fats, lower fat though, you don’t want to overdo it still in the morning and at lunch. And then in the evening after dinner, that’s when you can break out the sweets. So that’s when you break up the pies, things like that. A lot of times you’ll have this false belief that if they eat higher sugar foods or higher carbohydrate foods in the morning that they’re going to get up and they’re going to run around, they’re going to burn it off all day. That’s not what happens. We all have that Uncle that eats a pie for lunch and then passes out on the couch, right? That’s more or less what happens when people eat a lot of sugar. And then also what it does is it spikes their hunger. So they’re eating more throughout the day. So the best strategy I can give you on those days as big holiday days that you know you’re new through your family, save the carbohydrates for the evening. And then the next day they’re right back on through whatever nutrition plan you’re on and just keep hammering it out there. So just to kind of recap… and a bonus I almost forgot, hydrate, hydrate that day more than anything. So drink training, drink at least a gallon of water if you’re a male, three quarters of a gallon, three quarters of a gallon of water if you’re a female, okay, you can drink more than that. Females, you could drink a gallon isn’t going to hurt you… You can get by on half it’s not gonna hurt you on those holiday days. If you do that, you will eat less, you will feel better physically as well.
So to recap, go into the holidays with the momentum. You’re just starting out. Start today. Don’t wait until after the new year’s okay. Start right now. Step number two, prepare yourself mentally for the stress that’s coming. Okay. Start enjoying those activities that you find relaxing. We want to keep those up going into the holidays because there’s going to be stress. There is for the majority of Americans right around the holiday. So you de-stress yourself. Step number three, make sure when the holiday approaches, that big day approaches, we’re saving the sweet treats for the evening. Okay. We’re cutting out the carbohydrates throughout the day. You want to save them for after dinner or with dinner later in the evening. Okay. And then make sure you’re hydrated. You’re properly hydrated. If you follow those steps, you will stay on track. I promise you. You’re not going to gain 30 pounds when you simply follow those steps. So let’s get that momentum rolling. Let’s start today. Everybody, stay strong. If there’s any way I can help you, please reach out.”
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