The Best Exercise for Weight Loss

When you want to lose weight, you probably think of diet and exercise, right? But working out too much might be stalling fat loss! Exercise has so many benefits, but it may not help you lose as much weight as you think. Here, you’ll learn why over-exercise spikes stress hormones (leading to a cascade of problems), the FIRST thing you should do to get more exercise (hint: it’s not going to the gym!), and the best workout for your metabolic buck (and you can do this in under 10 minutes total). I’ll also reveal the most important aspect of exercise to get all of its benefits (many people aren’t doing this!), how to recover smartly, and how I exercised LESS to get much better results!

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ATHE_Transcript_Ep 414_YT Ep 11
JJ Virgin: [00:00:00] Are you killing yourself at the gym or on Peloton and waking up at 4:00 AM to go some extra miles. How's that working for you. Look, if you are exercising to lose weight and it's not working, there's a reason. I know it's tempting to think you're not doing enough. So then you're frustrated and you go to the gym and you push harder and harder as crazy as it seems.
There actually is such a thing as too much and over exercising, it could be keeping on the pounds. Wanna know what works stick around.
Hey, I'm JJ. And if you wanna keep up with things that will help you lose weight and keep it from coming back, let's stay connected, hit like on this video and subscribe to this channel and that'll get it done. All right. I've been doing this series on all of the reasons other than your diet, that you can't lose weight so far.
We've talked about stress, your gut, [00:01:00] sleep and toxins. So check out those other videos as well. If you really wanna make sure you give yourself the best chance of losing weight and making sure it doesn't come back. Now, we're gonna talk about exercise. Now, exercise is a good thing, right? What's the first thing you think of when you decide to lose weight?
What should you do? Diet and exercise, diet, and exercise. It's all you ever hear, but too much working out could be working against your weight loss goals and may even do more harm than good I've had clients who've exercised every single day and the pounds didn't budge. What the heck is going on? Let me start by saying exercise is an amazing and necessary thing for your health and, you know, little things like.
How long you wanna live. So there's that it gives you amazing benefits, like stronger bones, better insulin sensitivity, and better insulin sensitivity is key to being a better fat [00:02:00] burner, a better metabolism because you know, muscle requires more energy to stay on your body, healthier brain, and it helps detoxify you.
But it was, it doesn't do as well as everyone previously thought. Is to help you lose weight now, a little exercise. Sure. You'll drop a few pounds, but more and more research is being published that suggests exercising won't help you lose as much weight as you probably think. In 2016, researchers showed that the calories you burn basically plateau at a certain point because our bodies adapt increased physical activity.
This is what they said. And I quote total energy expenditure increases with physical activity at low activity levels. But. Plateaus at higher activity levels as the body adapts to maintain total energy expenditure within a narrow range. All right. That's a mouthful. In other words, exercise has diminishing returns.
Some of the dangers of extreme [00:03:00] exercise like ultra marathoning are pretty obvious and I'm guessing that's not your issue. It's definitely not mine, but if you wanna lose weight, it makes sense that you're gonna hit the gym or soul cycle or go up for a run on top of going on a diet. Right. So that's great.
It's when you constantly overdo that the bad things can happen. Of course, it depends on things like your age, your gender, and your general health too. But over exercising for anyone can wreak havoc on more than just your weight, it can impact your heart, your tendons, your ligaments, your immune system.
You name it. In fact, one study showed that women were less likely to have a heart attack or stroke if they were physically active, at least once a week. But the risk of heart attacks and strokes shot up for women who exercised hard every day. So intense exercise, doesn't actually give you more benefits and it could be hurting you.
Now. That's intense exercise hard every single day. Okay. Get me, listen to me on that one, but let's go through this. So if you are [00:04:00] overdoing it. Exercise boosts stress, hormones, and spikes cortisol because your body doesn't know the difference between exercise stress and normal stress. So over exercising means high cortisol, and that starts a bad cascade.
This cascade of breaking down muscle, instead of building it storing more fat around your belly and can even mess with your thyroid function. plus too much. Cortisol also makes you moody, irritable. You can't concentrate or sleep and sometimes can even make you hungrier. So you feel bad and you're hungry all the time, which of course can boomerang you into overeating and weight gain.
And again, now I'm talking. Lots of high intensity exercise. Like you're doing big time CrossFit every single day, not rotating it in a couple times a week. All right. Number two, another sign of over training is obviously be tired all the time. You feel like every workout is a struggle and your performance is either not getting better or [00:05:00] it's getting worse, or maybe you just can't go as long or as hard as you used to or lift as much and being constantly exhausted, beats you up mentally and physically.
Which means you could get hurt. So if you notice that your resting heart rate is riding higher than normal, or your workouts are making you feel exhausted rather than energized, it's another sign that you could be overdoing it. Next one, your immune system is probably taking a beating too. So moderate exercise can help your immune system, but when you overdo it, it actually suppresses it.
So you think you're getting healthier? And you're setting yourself up to get sicker, plus that overexercise also increases something called oxidative stress, which is a marker of accelerated aging. So then what is the answer? How often should you exercise? How long, how hard. All right, here we go. I'm gonna break it down.
Here's what I recommend first off. move more. So before you do anything else and try all the [00:06:00] fancy stuff, just get moving. And this is where it's great to use a Fitbit or an apple watch or an, or a ring, something that will actually track you. And those, especially those ones that say stand up, right? So you wanna just move more throughout the day and big, big one is moving after you eat your last meal, boy, that helps lower the blood sugar response to a meal.
So work that into your routine, then hit high intensity interval training. That is where you're changing your steady state cardio, like going out for a jog and changing into warming up with an easy walk and then sprinting for 20 to 60 seconds and walking it off for twice as long and repeating to accumulate four to eight total minutes of the hard stuff in small bursts.
Why is that important that actually helps your body stimulate the growth of the boost of growth hormone. And it also helps train your sympathetic nervous system on how to handle stress better. So I like you to do that three times a week, [00:07:00] next up resistance training, pump it up. And I always say you wanna pump it up to build your metabolic spanks.
What do I mean by that? Well, you know, spanks holds everything in tighter. Metabolic spanks means when you build muscle, it holds everything in tighter and boosts your metabolism along with it. So I like you to hit each body part at least twice a week. With resistance training. And then finally what I call mindful movement.
This is things like yoga and Tai Chi and Qigong that really create that mind body connection that helps heal and reorganize your nervous system. And most importantly, I want you to mix this all up. Cross train your diet, cross, train your exercise, right. And make sure, and this is super important. Probably the most important of all is that you have good recovery, that if you're gonna push a really hard workout, make sure that you eat well and rest well afterwards.
Now the other thing I'm gonna throw out there is that if you're super [00:08:00] focused on weight loss, you might be overdoing everything. And on top of working out too hard, maybe you're also overdoing the dieting and not eating enough. And, you know, I am not a fan of that. That is, if you're not eating enough and your body doesn't get the fuel, it needs, it is not going to be able to recover from these workouts and build the muscle that you need for a good, healthy metabolism.
And remember, you gotta heal your metabolism in order to lose weight. When you do that, if you're working out too hard and you're losing muscle, it slows down your body to calories. And guess what? Then you can pack on more fat or get sick. So if the main reason you're out there over exercising is cuz you wanna lose weight.
And the scale is not budging rethink how much you're exercising. I mean, how much more can do really listen to your body, get some rest, cut back, stop exercising. When you don't feel well, or under a lot of stress. I mean, case in point in my [00:09:00] twenties, my body fat was going between 22 and 25%. I was working out like a crazy person.
When, as a personal trainer, I would go running with clients every day. I'd always end the day at the gym myself. So I was working out a couple hours a day, 22 to 25% body fat in my 20's, should have been easier. Right. In my fifties, I'm 13% body fat working out 30 to 60 minutes a day averaging usually about 30 minutes.
So proof is in the pudding. Well, the dairy free pudding let's make it low sugar. So I really want you to change that mental programming that tells you if you're doing something bad or wrong if you're not exercising hard every day. Nope. Just. Make it that you move every day. All right. It's just like what I tell you about food too much.
Healthy food is unhealthy. Well, too much exercise is too. So I'm giving you permission to take your foot off the gas, which again, may seem counterintuitive from a fitness hall of Famer, but knock it off. All right. So eat to support your level of [00:10:00] exercise, hydrate more when you workout and get at least eight hours of sleep every night, cuz you've gotta do that.
Rest and recovery, work out hard. Rest and recover hard and on those other days. Hey, Yeah, take it a little bit easier. Do a nice walk. Do some mindful exercise. All right. I hope you got some good tips in this video and you get the most out of those workouts in the future, and don't forget to like, and subscribe.
So you get more tips to help you live your best healthy lifestyle. Now in the next video, we're gonna tackle to address the super common issue of thyroid fatigue and its impact on your metabolism. See you there.
For more info on this and other health topics I cover or to rate and review find me on Instagram, Facebook and my website, JJvirgin.com. And don't forget to subscribe to my show. So you won't miss a single episode. Go to subscribetojj.com. Thanks again for being with me this week.[00:11:00]

 

 

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