“Exercise is Stalling My Weight loss”

Is it true that exercise can cause weight gain or stall weight loss? Yes. There is some truth to it. One of the biggest reasons is that when we start an exercise program, we often burn more calories. Exercise can account for about 15 to 30 percent of our total daily calorie burn, and exercise can increase our appetite. As a result, we may take more food in. If you’re exercising a lot and fueling your body appropriately, you may potentially have some weight gain. 

Another factor is that when we exercise extremely or excessively, we can throw our hormones off. There are many hormones that are affected by exercise. We can stress our bodies pretty significantly when we over-exercise. 

What Are Your Goals?

Maybe you’re asking, “How do I get around this?”. And it all starts with what goal we’re trying to ultimately achieve. What do we really want? 

I have clients who are less concerned with body composition. All they want is to continue to drop scale weight. My recommendation is that exercise is non-negotiable because of the tremendous amount of health benefits it has. But it’s all about using it wisely. 

It’s recommended that the average American get about 150 minutes of moderate activity a week, which works out to thirty minutes five days a week. So what do you do? 

If you want to lose weight, ideally, you’ll do something that keeps your appetite at bay. Walking is a great, low-intensity option that burns calories but won’t have a huge afterburn effect. Note that some studies say that if you walk fasted, it can increase your fat burn, but it may also increase your hunger. 

Walking half an hour a day, enjoying yourself, and getting all of the benefits of exercise, doing that low-intensity exercise is your best friend. 

But what if your goal is body composition change, either increasing muscle mass, decreasing body fat, or doing both? In order to do this, there are two factors. If you don’t want to stimulate your appetite too much, you’ll want to maintain muscle mass and lose fat. To do that, you’ll need to do some strength training. Nothing too intense or vigorous, but something in which you’re stimulating your muscle. 

Things start to shift when we’re talking about gaining muscle. To gain muscle and maintain the same body fat, you will gain weight on the scale. If you gain muscle and lose fat, you’ll either maintain your weight or it will decrease slightly. 

So the big question is if we’re looking for the scale to move or for our body composition to change, because they’re very different approaches. When a client is okay with the scale maybe moving up a bit, the conversation is about stressing the muscle. We have to break the muscle down and cause micro-tears in order to build it back up. It may sound intense, but it can be very fun. We just have to be committed to the scale potentially going up at first or staying the same. Photos can be a great way to track our results even if our weight doesn’t change or even goes up. 

Putting it All Together

Let’s say you do want to change your body composition. Some questions come up. How much strength training? How much cardio? How often? Well, unless you’re a fitness competitor or a bodybuilder, it’s best to have a realistic time frame, which means you can go slower. The next question is how much time you’re willing to commit. 

Strength Training

If you’re new to the world of weight training, you won’t want to do it seven days a week and do maximum cardio because your body learns quickly. It won’t continue to change. Less is more, especially to start. We want to do the smallest amount we can and still see results. Typically my clients start with three strength training sessions per week with a full-body approach. This allows us to maximize the results we can get with minimal work. 

Then we observe and see what happens. At the two-week mark, if we’re serious about continuing on and making changes and improvements, we’ll tweak something. Maybe the duration, number, or style of the workouts. Every two weeks, we’ll think about changing something, always staying one step ahead of the body before it can catch onto us. That’s why having a coach can be so helpful.

Cardio

Again, the idea is to start off with the least amount of cardio you can do and still see results. Typically, I start my clients who want to make a body transformation off with 15 to 20 minutes of cardio three times a week, tacked onto the strength training workout or alternated with strength days. It’s up to you if you want to work out six days a week or have more days off.

Depending on how fast you want to do this, you can strategize and see what your body responds to best. Maybe you have a greater fat burn effect by doing fasted cardio in the morning, having a meal, and then doing your strength training routine. You can get it all done in one day and repeat three times a week. Or you can do your weight lifting first, empty out your glycogen, and then do your cardio, which will make your body have to burn fat for fuel.

If this all works and you see changes, we keep it right here until we stop seeing changes. Maybe we increase the weight you lift. Maybe you decrease the rest time between sets. All of these are tweaks we can make to maximize what we’re doing without adding more days of exercise in a week. Once we’ve exhausted that option, we can look at adding more days. 

So, sure, exercise may stall your weight loss. But many clients of mine start seeing the positive changes - more muscle, better fitness, better endurance, more energy - and want to keep going regardless of what happens on the scale. For so long, we’ve focused on our weight, and so many of us are tired of it. We’re starting to realize that weight isn’t the whole story. It doesn’t define our health.

Most importantly, what do you really want for yourself? Not for what other people think. How do you want to proceed? Any result you want, you can have.