Why You're NOT LOSING WEIGHT With Exercise And Diet

It's really frustrating

when you're exercising and

following some kind of diet, and you're not seeing the

results that you're looking for. But you might be missing some of the

key points of how weight loss actually works. There's really only one thing that

matters when it comes to losing weight. And I'm gonna tell you what that is. The first issue might be that

you're relying on exercise too much. Exercise helps you feel better, be less

stiff and just be more healthy overall, but it doesn't burn off as many

calories as you think it does. It's hard to give accurate figures because

your calorie expenditure depends on your weight. And then the intensity

that you're working at as well. 

 But if you're cycling for an

hour and you're about 170 pounds, you could be burning

off about 450 calories. If you're running six miles per hour,

which is about 10 kilometers per hour, that's a fairly decent pace in

an hour, you could burn 600, maybe 650 calories, but that's an hour. And not everybody has time to do

an hour of cardio every single day. So if we go to that general equation where

losing a pound of fat requires you to have a deficit of 3,500 calories a week, which is 500 calories a day, you're gonna

have to cycle for more than an hour, a day, or run for about 45 to 50

minutes to get that level of fat loss. Just with exercise. Weight training

generally burns off even fewer calories, but that's not to say

that it's not useful. 

 It does have the benefit

of building muscle. Mass muscle is more

metabolically active than fat. So it's burning off more calories, but that difference isn't as great as

most people think. You might be burning off 50 to a hundred extra calories a day

by putting on a reasonable amount of muscle. And it's not that

easy to put on muscle. I still encourage weight

training of course, because it helps you feel stronger and

it tends to make you more likely to move more throughout the day. If

you're carrying a lot of fat, that tissue is not active, you're

more likely to burn off more calories. If you have more muscle mass, that extra movement is something

we call NEAT: non-exercise activity 

 Thermogenesis, and that can contribute 10 to 15% of

your total calorie expenditure for the day. Your total daily energy expenditure

is your basal metabolic rate. So that's just all the metabolic processes

that your body does throughout the day plus NEAT, which I just talked about, plus the thermic effect of food

and any exercise that you do. So roughly broken down for

most people as 60-70% for BMR, neat is 10 to 15%. The thermic

effect of food is about 10%. So that's where the quality of your food

and the macronutrient content of your food, whether it contains protein

or fiber makes a difference. Highly processed foods, for instance,

have a lower thermic effect. 

 It doesn't take as much effort

for your body to burn them off, but these are all relatively minor

numbers. When it comes to the the big picture. In

comparison to nutrition. Usually nutrition will account for

about 80 to 90% of your weight loss results. Ignoring diet makes

it really hard to lose weight. It's actually okay to skip

a week or two of exercise. You don't do as much damage

to your weight as you think, but adding too many calories for a couple

of weeks, that will make an impact, but I'm dieting people often ask me

what I recommend in terms of diet. Is it intermittent, fasting

or paleo vegan or vegetarian, the Mediterranean diet

or clean eating or keto? And the short answer is, it depends. For me, 

 The most important thing for

lasting weight loss is consistency. Can you maintain that

diet over the long term? The only absolute requirement is that

diet allows you to get into a calorie deficit so that you're burning off more

calories than your body needs on a daily basis. And that's actually

how all of those diets work. It doesn't matter which one you're

following. If you're in a calorie deficit, then you're going to lose weight, but you can also follow any of those

diets and not be in a calorie deficit and not lose weight. If you take in

more calories than your body needs, then you are in a calorie

surplus, and you will put on fat. All of those diets work by getting

you into a calorie deficit. There are simply strategies

that you can use. 

 People will tell you that they work for

other reasons like insulin levels or detoxing your body, but that's not it.

When we talk about lower carb diets, they may help reduce your

cravings and your appetite, and that helps you to

reduce your caloric intake. But if you still find yourself hungry

on a low carb diet and you overeat, then you'll still put on weight. If

you're doing intermittent fasting, but you somehow manage to squeeze

3000 calories into your window and that's your maintenance calories, or maybe that's even above

your maintenance calories, then you're not going to lose any weight.

The same goes for keto or vegetarian, whatever it is. Clean eating is the one

that I find the most annoying, I guess, because it's such a judgment on you.

I'm eating clean and your food is dirty. 

 There's no scientific definition

of clean in terms of food, unless you wash it with soap,

I guess then it's cleaner. So people are making up these arbitrary

rules about what's clean food and what's dirty food. Sometimes

you're allowed to have meat, but only if it's grass fed. Other times,

you're not allowed to have dairy. It just depends on whose particular

clean eating regime you're following. None of this is scientifically

tested in that way. It's just people making judgements and

then putting judgements on you for eating food that you enjoy.

And I'm not into that. So the reason that you're

not losing weight is not

because too much of your food is dirty. Now it's because you're

eating too many calories overall. It's certainly possible to not lose

weight while following a traditional clean 

 Eating diet. There are a lot of foods

that are considered very healthy. They are healthy. That

are very calorie dense. So there's a lot of calories

packed into that little serving. My favorite example is my favorite nut,

the Macadamian nut. In about 10 nuts. It's about 200 calories and you better

believe that I can eat more than 10 macadamia nuts. Salmon, lots of healthy

omega three fats. It's delicious. I love it. One little fillet is

280 calories. I might have two. Was it baked on olive oil

or some other kind of oil? Well oils add 120 calories per tablespoon. A medium avocado has about 230

to 240 calories depending on who you ask. And that's

considered a very healthy food. But if you put together salmon and

avocado and some macadamia nuts, 

 That's a high calorie meal. And

if you're having that frequently, then you may very well be

struggling to lose weight. And it's not your fault because there's

the perception that if you're eating healthy, then everything's

going to be fine. But if you don't pay attention

to calories, then weight

loss is not inevitable. Even if you're eating whole

minimally processed foods, you can still go over your calorie

intake for the day and you can be in a calorie surplus and put on fat. It's just a little bit harder because

those foods tend to be a little bit more bulky and harder to eat

than highly processed foods, which are also very calorie

dense and easy to eat. I actually had a comment

recently on one of my videos, 

 It was actually about losing

weight without exercising at all. And if you paid attention a little

bit to what I said at the beginning, it is possible to lose

weight without exercise. This person said that they can't

exercise for a couple of medical reasons and they're watching what they eat,

but they're not losing weight. Now, watching what I eat is very vague

and it's not enough to just kind of say, oh yeah, it looks okay. I

mean, I have some veggies in there. I have some fruit, I've got some protein. If you don't know the total amount of

calories that you're having for the day, then you don't really know what it's

gonna take to be in a calorie deficit and start losing weight. So it's important to take a

look at calories in some cases, 

 Macros as well. So how much protein

are you getting? How much fiber? Because we talked about

the thermic effect of food, protein and fiber have higher TEF and

that means you're burning off a slightly higher amount. Eating well and eating mostly

whole unprocessed foods is not always enough for

weight loss. It should, of course be the basis of most

nutrition plants that you come up with. If you're creating a diet, for sure,

lots of minimally processed foods, lean proteins, lots of vegetables

and fruit, some seeds and nuts, those kind of things mixed in. But if you don't have any awareness

of how many calories you're taking in, then you can't guarantee yourself

weight loss. And the tendency also, 

 When someone's watching, what they're eating is that most of

the time they might be eating that way, but then other things come in. So they're probably having those

treat foods here and there, and they might not be aware of it. So they're probably consuming

the right amount of calories, but then they throw a few treat

foods on top. And all of a sudden, they're not losing weight. You

need to look very specifically, primarily at your diet and how

many calories you're taking in. Then you need to know how consistent

you actually are with that diet, because a lot of people

follow a particular plan for

instance, during the week, and then on the weekends, they

don't follow it so carefully. 

 And all of a sudden you can easily

throw in an extra thousand or 2000 calories between

delicious food and drink. I actually did another video about how

you can undo all the good work you do during the week, buy what

you do on the weekend. I'm gonna stick it up here so

you can check that out as well. So rather than just generally saying, "Oh, I'm eating clean or I'm eating

mostly healthy or I'm following keto" but it's not working well. You're eating too many calories on

keto and you're not losing weight. I'm doing intermittent fasting,

why isn't working? well, you're eating too many calories

on intermittent fasting. And it's not enough to get

you into a calorie deficit. 

 A lot of people rely on exercise. So sometimes they're working out three

days a week and I think that's gonna be enough to push them into

fat loss. And it generally, isn't trying to do weight

loss just with exercise. I just hope you have a lot of time on

your hands so that you can do that. It is possible, especially

for people who are younger, have lots of time to work out. You

can do it, but I don't recommend it. Actually, the combination of diet and

exercise is gonna get you the best long term results. That's really

what you should be aiming for.