Are Your Workouts Making You Fat?

Posted by Brad Campbell

21
Jan, 2010

12 comments

An Advanced Fat Loss Post… by Brad Campbell

I had a TopFatLossTrainer reader email me today about this interesting article he’d found on another website (AlwynCosgrove.com).  Alwyn had reviewed a study from the Journal of Applied Physiology that looked at aerobic training and the post-workout boost in metabolism it caused… or in this case, failed to cause.

The study showed that participants who performed an easy 60-minute bike ride had absolutely NO increase in fat burning after finishing their joy ride (“workout”).  If you’ve been following my blog for a while now, this shouldn’t be surprising…

You know I’m all about milking your workouts for all they’re worth, which is why I design advanced fat loss workouts to blow up the metabolism for hours, if not days, after you stop working out.  After all, this is where the majority of your fat loss is going to take place.

Doing workouts that fail to burn extra fat off your trouble spots during your resting time is like having a crap-ton of money and letting it sit in a bank account that pays you no interest.  That’s dumb, right?  Of course it is…you should be leveraging that money to go to work for you, so you can sit back with your feet up and live off the interest.

Workouts are the same way.  If you want to make a wise investment with your workout time, you need to be spending it the right way, so it keeps paying you long after you stop.

Back to the study.  So not only was there no increase in post-workout fat burning after this low effort 60-minute bike ride, but most participants in this study actually burned LESS fat in the next 24-hours, as compared to those who did NOT work out.

Ain’t that a B?

The study concluded that a low intensity workout like this, when performed with calorie replacement, not only fails to burn extra fat post-workout, but may even have a negative impact on the rate of fat burning.

Basically, you devote 60 precious minutes to working out, come home, treat yourself to a small snack (that roughly matches the few hundred calories you just burned) and end up slightly FATTER for your efforts.

Jeez…are you gonna kick my puppy while you’re at it?

Or how bout you steal a homeless man’s sleeping bag?

I mean, even with all my preaching about how shorter, more intense and carefully designed workouts are the absolute coolest and most effective way to get lean and ripped (in less time, mind you)…even I was surprised to hear that a long, slow, boring and totally outdated cardio workout may actually make you FATTER, unless you starve your way into a huge negative caloric balance.

Now let’s consider the swarms of people out there who think that a 45-minute walk should be rewarded with cookies and ice cream that same day.  This is a problem.

People are drastically over-estimating how many calories their cardio workouts are burning and then going and totally sabotaging their efforts by out-eating the small amount of calories they actually burned off.

When you combine this with the fact that 95% of workouts aren’t even producing an increase in calorie burning post-workout session (and may even be slowing down your metabolism), you’ve got a recipe for a big, nasty fat storm.  Most people are caught up in this fat storm and the forecast is looking gloomy.

But I’m gonna throw you an umbrella and show you how to move some place tropical.

Remember, I’ll never say that a longer, lower intensity, steady-state cardio session is absolutely worthless and has no place whatsoever in your overall game plan.

But for most people, the majority of your workouts should be targeted towards getting the best bang for your buck and making your workouts go to freakin’ war for you and your dream body.

The best way to do this is by following the weight training workouts, cardio workouts, bodyweight workouts and hybrid workouts I’ve designed for you right here on this blog.

You give me the effort and I’ll be the science geek who does all the thinking for you and designs the type of lean body workouts that’ll have your metabolism straight slamming.  Pedal to the fat burning metal, baby.

Deal?  Cool, let’s CRUSH it together.  Don’t change that channel… lots more crazy content coming your way.

Your Coach,

Brad Campbell

Posted in Fat Loss | Burn Fat Fast by Brad Campbell | 12 Comments

12 Comments "Are Your Workouts Making You Fat?"

  • Jenna Culbertson says:
    January 21, 2010 at 8:48 pm
    Reply

    Wow. Finally some honesty when it comes to workouts. Thank you.

  • Tom - ICanTransform says:
    January 22, 2010 at 4:03 am
    Reply

    I am to be honest a bit shocked at this. Just the thought that some excercise could be worse than no excercise. I have always been dubious of the way calories are calculated on cardio excercises at the gym. If someone has the time they could walk stroll along at 1mph and rack up thousands but I just cant see not breaking any sweat doing much.

    Glad to see some scientific evidence

    • Brad Campbell says:
      January 22, 2010 at 8:50 am
      Reply

      hey Tom, it’s depressing, huh? long and slow cardio just doesn’t do a lot for you in terms of making you look better. with everything else in place it can be a nice way to burn some extra cals “during” the workout, but of course you have to maintain a nice sized calorie deficit to see the rewards of this.

      -b

  • raul says:
    January 22, 2010 at 7:43 am
    Reply

    i disagree with this,
    in my opinion its all about calorie deficit,
    if you just eat less what you burn you will lose fat no matter what, you even can lose fat without even exercising,( theory)

    people just want to hear the right words,

    - There is no such thing as a fat-burning pulserate for losing weight

    - You shouldn’t be considering your heartrate when doing a training for losing weight

    - Losing weight is about achieving a calorie-deficit, not about doing cardio at a so called “fat burning pulse rate”

    - The more intensive your training is, the higher your calorie-deficit will be. The so called fat burning pulse rate is too low for being efficient in generating a substantial calorie-deficit.

    - The major part of losing weight is the “afterburner-effect” which lasts for hours after your training and the more intensive your training was, the more fat will be burnt in those hours after your training. Training at fat burning pulse rate burns more fat *during* training, but its “afterburner-effect” will be much lower than when you train at a pulse of 150 or even more. So the “relative amount of fat burning” will be higher when you do the fatburning pulse rate. But the “absolute amount” of burnt fat will be much higher if you exceed that pulse rate and do more intensive training.

    - You have to differentiate between fat-burning and fat-reducing. Fat burning is what you achieve best if you train at the fat burning pulse rate. But actual fat reducing (which involves not only the training but also the hours after the training) is much higher if you maximise the intensity of your training beyond the fat burning pulse rate. (Anyone who is a little used to running knows that running at 120-130 bpm is not intensive. )

    - Doing the 30 minutes-at-fatburning-pulserate type of training (as you can often see it in the fitness centers) is not effective if you really want to lose weight

    • Brad Campbell says:
      January 22, 2010 at 8:59 am
      Reply

      hey raul – i’m not sure what you are disagreeing with? a calorie deficit will lead to fat loss – like Scott summed up, the point of this study was that a 60-min low intensity workout did not produce ANY afterburn effect and may even lead to slight fat gain when the subjects “refueled” post-workout (meaning they took back in the cals they burnt off during the workout).

      yes, the fat burning heart rate is more of a sales pitch and/or misused phrase (similar to people saying that muscle weighs more than fat) that the general public is confused about. good distinctions there, man.

      thx for the feedback.

      -b

  • Scott says:
    January 22, 2010 at 8:11 am
    Reply

    I think the point was that there was a study done at the University of Colorado in which the results pointed to little to no afterburn effect after performing low-impact cardio and that the 300-400 calories expired for the exercise is easily negated by the intake of perhaps a sports drink, a few cookies, or some other off-diet calories coonsumed as a reward. The end result being that for your efforts you could be worse off (fatter) than having done noting at all.

    Hence the value of Brad’s recommended workouts– short and promoting afterburn for a longer period of fat oxidation. Makes sense to me.

  • Brad Campbell says:
    January 22, 2010 at 9:02 am
    Reply

    great summary Scott – afterburn is a tactic that you’ve practically mastered by now and I know your body has changed a lot already thanks to this concept. looking forward to seeing the finished masterpiece in a few months.

    -b

  • Nadia says:
    January 22, 2010 at 11:43 pm
    Reply

    This is unrelated, but the girl in the first picture has the most amazing derriere I have ever seen!

  • jake says:
    January 24, 2010 at 3:07 am
    Reply

    hey brad im doin fine ive done a lot of training and ive loss 9 kg. in 3 1/2 months now im 72 kg in weight i wanna know how can i make protein shakes to boost up my muscles??? can u give me advice and tips brad thanks im waitin for your reply…

Leave a Comment

>Checkout How to Grow Height Fast ?