Can"t I Just Train Hard and Eat What I Want?
You won't have to worry about what you eat or how much you eat, as long as you make it to the gym every day.
Or six days a week.
Or at least two days every other week.
I'm going to tell you a truth that makes a lot fitness experts very uncomfortable.
Training hard is not enough for losing weight.
The truth is, exercise is simply not what it's cracked up to be.
Don't misunderstand me.
I work with people to design enjoyable and effective exercise routines and I help them figure out their optimal nutrition.
But if you want to lose pounds while you gain muscle, diet alone just won't cut it.
Two recent scientific studies have shown that exercise alone just is not that effective for helping people lose fat, gain lean, and optimize their body composition.
In one study at the University of Texas, 100 overweight people either began an exercise routine or remained sedentary.
Those who were assigned to the exercise group wound doing about an hour of exercise a day, six days a week, for 90 days.
The other 50 people? They didn't diet, and they didn't exercise.
At the end of the 90 days who do you supposed weighed less? The shocking finding was that at the end of 90 days the exercisers weighed more than the sedentary study participants who did not diet.
The exercisers did lose an average of one pound of fat.
But because they also gained two pounds of muscle, they weighed more than the people who did nothing at all.
Scientists at the University of Oklahoma conducted a similar study in which overweight people either exercised about five hours a week or remained sedentary.
This story went on for 10 weeks, and the results were similar.
The exercisers lost an average of 1.
5 pounds of fat while gaining 1.
5 pounds of lean-for a net weight loss of zero.
There are many benefits to having more muscle.
Exercising will definitely give you more muscle.
It just won't help you lose weight.
In fact, without the right diet, it usually helps you gain weight.