I’ve been a personal trainer for over 20 years at this point and I’ve seen a lot come and go. Some of it had merit and stuck around, some of it had merit and for various reasons fell back into obscurity and some of it just simply sticks around even though it doesn’t work.

That would be using cardio as the primary driver for fat loss training.

an example of what I’m talking about

When I first started out as a personal trainer, I remember seeing a graphic on the treadmills indicating the fat burning zone (which is largely a myth based on a misinterpreted scientific study) and the cardiovascular zone and they were indicated with various colors. There is a particular franchise with a fruit color theme as part of their brand which bases their philosophy on that.

The only fruit I would even consider being part of my brand would be peaches. 🍑

Anyway, what’s funny is one of my clients recently said she wants to get me a lab coat because I come at it from a scientific mindset. Effective program design is a form of art and I’m probably more of the artist sort with open paint cans and such, but I do pay attention to science as well.

The main reason why, is when I make claims, I’m not making it as “just trust me bro” I can say, this is what the science says.

“And a meta analysis of over 400 scientific studies conducted over the past 25 years on fat loss research concluded that aerobic training does not provide a significant advantage over dieting alone.”  International Journal Obesity Metabolic Disorder

Why?

Think of how we evolved. Back before you could simply get a cheeseburger with fries at a drive through, prehistoric humans had to survive through various periods of famine. When food was a surplus, it would get stored in the event of another famine. Fat contains 9 calories per gram, while protein (ie muscle) and carbohydrates (ie glycogen) each only have 4 calories per gram. This makes fat more valuable than the other two in the prehistoric survival sense.

Fortunately we don’t live in those times anymore. You can go to the local grocery store and get food without having to hunt it down or farm it. Unfortunately we have those same prehistoric mechanisms at play thinking it might have to keep us alive. Survival at all costs.

Here’s how this plays out in the real world. In order for fat loss to occur there has to be a caloric deficit, as in the calories coming in have to be higher than the calories going out. Calories coming in, would come from your food. The calories going out come from a couple different places though.

The first and biggest one would be your base metabolic rate (ie resting metabolic rate). This is the energy it takes to keep your heart beating, your immune system working, your body repairing itself, your lungs functioning etc. This is also the biggest contributor and varies from person to person which is why some people can get away with eating a lot, while some people just look at food and gain weight. Your base metabolic rate represents approximately 70% of your total daily caloric burn.

The second biggest contributor to your daily caloric burn would be your everyday life activity. This covers the various things you do during the day from getting your mail, to picking your nose, fidgeting in your seat, playing with your kids, carrying the groceries, gardening, flipping people off on 287 south and walking to the bathroom. This would be approximately 15% of your daily caloric burn.

Next would be the thermic effect from food. Basically when you eat food it takes energy to break it down, digest it and turn it into energy. The amount of calories it takes to do that is about twice as high with protein (which is why you get the meat sweats when you go to a Brazilian grill) as it is with carbs and fats. This would represent about 10% of your daily caloric burn.

Then the last 5% would be the calories you burn during a workout. 5% is a really small number and shouldn’t be the one you focus on.  This majoring in the minors is what those cardio oriented workouts focus on.

Now you read that calories coming in have to be lower than calories going out. But because our bodies are still running on that survival at all costs mode leftover from the Paleolithic era, trying to create that deficit by trying to burn it off with cardio becomes like a dog chasing its tail.

Too much and your body down subconsciously down-regulates your daily activity, and/or upregulates your hunger in an attempt to make up for those lost calories. You fidget less, you sit down more, you eat more because you’re hungry, you lay down and veg because you’re exhausted. You are essentially working against yourself.

What I focus on with my clients is building muscle, which increases that base metabolic rate (the biggest daily caloric burn contributor) and signals your body to burn fat instead of muscle. And if you are getting a lot of protein (the highest thermic effect) you’ll not only feed the muscles their building blocks, but you’ll be satiated so you’ll be too stuffed to even want that pint of Ben and Jerry’s.

Even if you go excessive with the calories from protein, for some reason they don’t get stored as fat. They’re free.  And yes there is a study to back that up too.  The people in this study had a daily excess of 880 calories from protein, and it didn’t get stored as fat  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4022420/

And no, building muscle won’t bulk you up too much. Going back to that Paleolithic era analogy, your body thinks it doesn’t want excessive amounts of muscle because it would take too many calories in the event of a starvation cycle to maintain it. That’s also why people have to resort to performance enhancement drugs, because your body has built in protection mechanisms to put a halt on it.

So in essence, it’s a 3 part equation.

1. Help create a caloric deficit by building your basal metabolic rate by building muscle.
2. Prioritize protein to help build/keep muscle while taking advantage of the thermic effect of food and can help keep you satiated in a caloric deficit.
3. Maintain a caloric deficit by not eating excessive amounts of calories.

With the training plans I do, I help my clients get way stronger in the ranges that build muscle, and can do so in a caloric deficit which completely transforms their physiques. I’ll talk a bit about this in a future post so stay tuned.

I know I threw a lot at you with this article, but I hope you learned something. If all this is still confusing to you, don’t worry, this is what I do and I figure it out for you, all you have to do is show up and follow the plan. I offer a free trial so you can test drive it yourself. Just send me a text at 973 476 5328 and introduce yourself to get started and we’ll take it from there.

Eric Moss is a personal trainer in Boonton and moonlights as a world-record-holding modern-day professional performing strongman, author, and motivational speaker. In the tradition of the strength performers more common during the turn of the century, he performs feats of strength such as bending steel and breaking chains as part of a live show and travels across the country doing presentations on goal achievement for conferences, corporations, associations, nonprofits, and government entities as well as for schools and universities. His personal training studio is located on Main Street in Boonton New Jersey and is close to Mountain Lakes, Denville, Montville, Kinnelon, Pine Brook, Butler, and Parsippany New Jersey.