Seeing results can be misleading. To one person it means watching that scale drop week after week and I’m not talking about one pound. They want results like they see on TV. Celebrity Fit Club, The Biggest Loser, etc., have made us believe that anything less than four or five pounds a week is not even worth our time. The results obtained on those shows are such an illusion.
1. Those people aren’t just losing fat. For the sake of good ratings, these people are losing anything and everything to drop big numbers. This means fat, muscle, and water are all being dropped with fat being the smallest component. A good program will have you losing a lot of fat and very little muscle and water.
2. These people have a team of people working on them. If you had someone supplying food, money to be on the show, a big ole prize at the end, cameras following you, and some fabulous trainers working you out, wouldn’t you be able to lose aggressively? Most of us don’t have those luxuaries.
So, let’s assume you are Joe Blow reader to PNP. You are smart enough to know that seeing results has nothing to do with the scale but everything to do with inches lost. You know that seeing results really means that you are losing inches and visually changing before your own eyes.
A solid program designed for fat loss should start showing good results in the first six weeks. During this time you should lose quite a few inches because fat is melting off. The components to a solid program are like those I discussed last week, but I will refresh your memory.
1. Your diet. You should aim to lose 1-2 lbs. a week and no more to have results that are true fat loss. If you consistently lose more than 1-2 lbs. a week you are only fooling yourself and becoming a dreaded skinny fat or jiggly fat. Yuck.
My rule of thumb is to take your Resting Metabolic Rate plus your calories burned from exercise for the day plus 200 calories for misc. daily activities (walking to your car, grocery shopping, taking care of your kids, laundry, etc.). Subtract 500 to 750 calories. This gives you the total number calories you should eat for the day. Most people burn about the same amount each day during their exercise so you can simply use an average for your week.
Example: My RMR is 1480 calories a day. I average 600 calories burned per day in exercise.
During fat loss mode -
1480 + 600 + 200 = 2280 - 500 = 1700 calories a day.
I should be able to eat 1700 calories a day and lose 1 pound a week safely and lose mostly fat versus muscle and water. For maintenance I simply eat about 2300 calories a day. If I wanted to exercise less I would just subtract out those calories I don’t burn.
Figuring your calories this way will help you lose the most amount of fat. It keeps you eating the max amount you need while forcing you to exercise more for your caloric deficit. I am a big believer that the best way to lose fat is by working out harder and cutting only as many calories from your diet as needed. Your body needs fuel to function and it needs to fuel to keep itself performing well over the course of your lifetime.
2. Your exercise program. You need a solid program to see good results. You need to combine a good, butt-busting cardio program with a strong strength program. The strength program will help you burn more calories and shape your muscles. The cardio will burn off the fat. By combining the two you will “see” the results faster. Just going whole hog on cardio doesn’t allow you to see the results as fast.
I hope this answers two questions from last week: how long does it take to see results and how do you change your exercise and eating to a maintenance phase. (Basics of maintenance exercsie - 1-2 strength sessions a week consisting of full body along with 3-4 30 minute cardio sessions a week).