Weight Loss for the Long Game

You just finished a kick @ss work out where you're sweating, breathing hard, and generally feeling like you exerted an effort you're proud of. Maybe it was a tough run, or an intense cycling class, or some other version of high level cardio. You look at your calories burned and it's confirmed that you expended a ton of energy and your heart rate was high for most of the workout. These types of workouts leave us feeling proud, strong, and efficacious. They are also great for our mood and cardiovascular health, and help us burn the extra calories we need to be in an energy deficit. They may lead to short-term weight loss, but I would guess that if you are someone who loses weight in this manner, you've likely put it back on again at some point. So while the short term results of high intensity cardio may be desirable, these types of workouts simply aren't as effective for long-term weight management, and here's why.

When you lose weight due to a calorie deficit but don't make an effort to integrate resistance training, much of the mass you lose is lean mass. Your body weight goes down, but so does your muscle mass. This also means that your baseline caloric needs will be reduced because you've dropped weight. In other words, to sustain weight loss in this manner, you need to continue to reduce your calories over the long run until you reach maintenance. At that point, however, if you've been in a negative energy balance for an extended time, you may feel your hunger levels rise. Because you haven't changed your body composition, you don't have the benefits of retained lean mass to help protect your basal metabolic rate, it is going to be far harder to maintain the caloric intake necessary to maintain this new body weight. You'll also probably start feeling very mentally and physically fatigued, trying to maintain high intensity workouts while keeping your calories low. With this approach, you may feel like you're constantly trying to hang on to your lower weight for dear life, which is incredibly psychologically and emotionally draining. No one wants to feel like they have to indefinitely say "no" to living life in order to achieve the body composition they want. And I don't want that for you.

Contrast that with strength training during a caloric deficit. No, you won't be panting and sweating at the end of your workout. You will have to be patient in between sets to let your muscles recover. It is slow and doesn't always feel productive in the moment. But what is happening as that you are protecting your muscle mass, and possibly even growing it, while losing fat mass. It will likely take longer than the short term weight loss that you're chasing in the previous example, but it will be far easier (and dare I say, enjoyable?!) to sustain in the long term. Additionally, you will likely notice that your body looks and feels different. It's not just a thinner version of you; it's a leaner, more defined version of you.

If you have attempted to lose weight in the past and have cycled between diets and maintenance phases more than you would like, then the key to the change you want is likely resistance training. Cardio and HIIT have an important place in every fitness plan, particularly for the cardiovascular benefits. But if you're after a leaner, healthier body that doesn't feel exhausting to maintain in the longer term, then join our program and lift with Shift. The strength and definition is within you- you just need the right tools and strategies to discover it.

Short term weight loss may be achieved by long, intimate dates with the cardio machines (whom, by the way, I do love dearly for race training) but sustainable weight loss comes from speed dates with these these heavy hitters instead.