Exercising on a regular basis and yet still struggling to shed excess fat? I can probably tell you why.
Either the way you’re eating is out of line with fat loss or your training is not optimal for fat burning.
Does the following scenario sound familiar?
You start a new fitness regime with some workouts you like the look of, or maybe you decide to take up running, or cycling, or whatever.
At first it’s great – the fat starts coming off, you feel fitter and healthier and it seems like you’ve found “The Answer”.
After a few weeks you start getting used to it. Now it all feels a lot easier, it even begins to feel comfortable. Wohoo, it’s working!
…But then comes the kicker: Just as you’re feeling like you’ve nailed the workout habit the fat stops shifting.
So, you decide to push yourself more by exercising for longer sessions. If you’ve taken up running maybe you enter a race, after all it’s good to have training goals, everyone knows that.
Joy of joys, with the increase in training a bit more fat comes off. Wohoo, it’s working again!
…But then fat loss stalls again, quite quickly this time.
Your body, being the wonderful machine that it is, just keeps adapting to cope with the longer training sessions.
You’re pretty much max-ing out on your available exercise time at this point. But you really want to get this excess fat off you and to see some muscle definition. You’re not a quitter after all. So, you make time. And you ignore those pains in your joints and the general weariness you’re starting to feel because it’s all about pushing through the pain, isn’t it?
Like the hero you are, you carry on. Until you eventually have to stop because your body can’t take it anymore and you get ill or injured. Or maybe just because you realise it’s getting a bit ridiculous putting all this time and effort into something that isn’t producing the results you started it doing it to pursue.
So you stop. And gain back all the weight you lost. Plus more besides maybe.
Yep, that’s me. In my running days on the left and a “behind the scenes” shot from the shoot for my book last summer on the right.
…Well, wasn’t that fun?
Sorry, I don’t mean to make light of it. Believe me, I’ve been there myself. And probably much further into the spiral than you. (Unless you’ve ran events longer than 50 miles.) I’ve never been obese but I certainly had some stubborn extra pounds I just couldn’t seem to shift.
At the time I was a fitness writer, so the fact that I felt like *should* know the answers made it all the more frustrating.
Eventually though, I figured out something that now seems so blindingly obvious that if what happened to me wasn’t so common I’d be embarrassed. Here’s the rub:
Any type of long, slow endurance exercise, when done regularly will cause the body to become more endurance-focused. It will then be inclined store energy as fat to ensure it has plenty of reserves to get through all the miles it is used to needing to fuel.
When I switched from long steady exercise to short, high-intensity sessions and added more variety and strength training into my training mix, my body changed. A lot. The fat came off, my energy levels soared and I became healthier, stronger and fitter.
This experience was one of the main reason I switched from writing about fitness to becoming a trainer. I’ve since helped loads of people make the same breakthroughs.
You don’t have to do my workouts to make your breakthrough, but I do highly recommend you get yourself a good plan. My member’s website has 16 different programmes featuring varied workout schedules, session durations are mostly from about 20 minutes to under an hour. The workouts change and increase in intensity before the body has chance to get comfortable with them and keep the system fired up for maximum fat burning even after the sessions are over.
One reason this is super-effective is because of the “afterburn” effect. Your metabolic rate goes through the roof and stays elevated even after you finish training while your body adapts and recovers. This will cause you to burn more fat for 24-48 hours after exercising, depending on how intense the training was. Of course, you also get the health and fitness improvements that come as a result of working your heart, lungs and muscles harder.
Also, when you train using high-intensity cardio and challenging resistance sessions, the body prefers to store fuel as glycogen in the muscles, which can be quickly released to enable fast-paced, power-driven activities.
By the way, I know very well that lots of people run or do other types of endurance training for reasons other than fat loss, that’s great for them, they’re not who this post is aimed at. I’m simply writing this to help people who have got caught up in the cycle of frustration described above. If that’s you, please know there is hope and there is a way of training that can help you finally shed the flab and re-sculpt your body.
I now optimise my workouts to leverage all these factors – and I still do a bit of running, which I enjoy more than ever now!
With my type of training you shed more fat, experience fewer injuries, improve your health, get a better body shape, increase your energy levels and with your accelerated metabolism it’s easier to maintain a leaner physique in the long term. Plus, you don’t need to spend as long exercising. Leaving you with some bonus extra time to spend feeling amazing. 😉
Want to try for yourself? Get started with my FREE 7-day multi-level workout plans!
[First published: 12/02/12 Updated: 27/10/21]