Why We Should NOT Train To Burn Calories

For many, this might be an extremely different approach or mindset you are used to or were taught. And in many cases, we were often taught that there are certain exercises or workouts that you should do if you want to lose fat - HINT: there is no one best exercise to lose fat. In fact, too many people are so focussed on burning calories during their training sessions, that it creates a negative relationship with that training and removes the focus from the areas that are actually important to elicit fat loss. So let's take a look at how we expend calories/energy during the day and how this impacts our fat loss journeys.

* Please note when it comes to fat loss the MOST IMPORTANT thing will always be to implement a CALORIE DEFICIT.

The biggest factor that determines how many calories we burn, is your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). These are the bodily processes that we are not in control of such as the heart beating, lungs taking in and expelling air, your eyes blinking, etc. In other words, it is the energy your body needs just to keep you alive and going.

Then we have what is referred to as the Thermic Effect of Feeding (TEF), this is a fancy way of saying the energy we use to extract, absorb and excrete the nutrients from our foods. We can control this process somewhat through the foods we consume. In other words, through the ratio of protein, carbohydrates, and fats that we include in our diet.

1. Protein requires the most amount of energy to digest (20 - 35%). So if you ate 150 calories worth of protein you lose about 20 - 35% of the calories to digestion - this equates to around 30 - 52.5 calories. This is one reason many diets advocate for high protein content, plus it is satiating.

2. Carbohydrates come in next, with 5 - 15% of the calories lost to digestion.

3. Fats require between 0 - 5% of the total calories to be processed. This does not mean we should avoid fats, as they play several important roles in the body such as aiding with hormone production, keeping the internal organs safe, they help in the absorption of nutrients, providing us with energy, etc.

The next one we will discuss is Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (EAT). This simply refers to your planned workout for the day, where you are training at a gym, sports field, at home, etc. As you should be able to see this component contributes the least to our overall energy expenditure. For most of us we train for about an hour or so, and really this is not enough time to cause any significant fat loss. However, this is plenty of time to improve our performance within our chosen activity. For example, looking to increase our speed, strength, power, endurance, agility, mobility, balance... the list goes on!

Why I enjoy teaching people about this concept is that it helps them develop a better relationship with their training because they can focus on choosing an activity (be it Bootcamp, football, dancing, CrossFit, whatever) that they find enjoyable as opposed to how many calories it claims to burn. And better yet, their focus turns to improving their abilities within that activity, not how much energy they have expended. To me, training should be enjoyable because it means you are much more likely to stick to it. I hope nobody feels discouraged by this notion, because it actually opens up the opportunity to burn a substantial amount of calories outside of our training, throughout the day, using light and low-impact activities.

Finally, we have NEAT or Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. This is perhaps the most underrated and underappreciated form of calorie expenditure. NEAT is basically how active we are outside of our planned exercise regime. And as you can see it actually contributes quite a substantial amount towards our TDEE. If we think about it, we spend about 60% of our day awake and outside of the gym (roughly 15 hours). So we have 15 hours worth of opportunities to be more physically active - minds are blown, I know! One of the simplest ways I've found to increase my own activity level is by implementing a daily 10 000 step goal. Depending on factors such as your age, sex, weight, and height this equates to about 400 - 500 calories burned and close to 2 hours of additional activity.

Another benefit is that it can help reduce your sitting time and improve your posture and hip mobility (not too shabby I'd say). Speaking for myself, I enjoy spending time walking as I use this as my personal time to reflect on things that are important to me and actually find it positively impacts my overall productivity as well. The reason I like using a step target is that you can fit it in almost anywhere: at work, shopping, around the house, or even just taking the stairs instead of the elevator. If 10 000 steps sound too daunting right now, aim for 6000 and try to stick to that for a week or two and slowly add on 300 - 500 steps, and in no time at all, you'll also get to that mark :) There are other ways to be more active outside of a step count such as gardening, playing with your kids (fur babies count too), and doing chores around the house, basically, anything that gets you up and moving will be beneficial.

The ultimate take-home message from this article is that to lose fat, we must be in a calorie deficit, beyond that, being more active outside our training schedule will help us burn quite a few calories. This means we can focus our energy on improving our performance during our training regime, which creates a healthier and more sustainable relationship with your training.

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