How much training is needed for fat loss?
When we’re talking about fat loss, what we’re really talking about is getting lean.
That means maintaining (or building) muscle and reducing the layer of fat covering those muscles.
Now ladies, building muscle doesn’t mean you’ll ‘bulk up’ – women simply don’t have the testosterone (hormone) levels to allow for large muscle growth. They do however have the ability to build their lean muscle – and lean muscle increases metabolism.
This is important! Because the higher your metabolism, the more calories you burn when you’re at rest – aka doing nothing!
It’s also important to note that more exercise is not always better. In fact if you want to lose fat, you should be doing a moderate amount of exercise and focusing on eating well.
If you aren’t exercising at all then get started training a few times per week.
If you are currently training regularly, increasing your number of sessions per week to six or seven or even trying to fit in two workouts per day is unlikely to be helpful and may even leave your weight loss in more of a stalemate than before!
Studies have shown that increasing exercise to more than a moderate amount per week does not increase the number of calories you burn in a day.
How is this possible? Well its all about survival. Your amazing body is worried about you and it simply adapts your daily energy needs so that you can keep doing what you’re doing without losing too much weight.
The other problem with exercising too much is that training naturally increases hunger! So if you don’t have a solid nutrition plan in place you could easily blow all of your hard work and despite all your efforts – never see the results you want.
When it comes to shifting kilos long term, a combination of exercise and healthy eating seems to work better than just using one approach or the other.
Training benefits also include stronger muscles, denser bones, reduced inflammation, a positive influence on gut bacteria and improved mental health and happiness – all of which are able to assist weight loss efforts in their own right.
Looking around at our gym community, it’s easy to see why combining exercise and healthy eating to lose weight is the best approach. It’s like anything in life, things tend to all be going right, or all be going wrong at the same time.
The improved confidence and overall mental state that comes from regular exercise encourages and re-inforces our healthy eating choices – as long as we have a nutrition plan in place we can keep everything going right.
Where it’s so common for a little slip-up in a healthy diet to induce a full blown eating binge or a day missed at the gym cascade into a very lazy month, it’s the people who are doing both that can stick it out and see faster results.
In Newcastle, NSW? Check out our popular 28 day program here.
This no-fail quick start package for new members is a 28 day program including goal setting with a coach, an intro session to the gym, unlimited small group personal training and a full nutrition guide with a complete recipe manual for fat loss or muscle gain. This proven program gets result fast!