You have been training with your personal trainer and you are starting to see results, excellent! How long have you been exercising? Two weeks, one month? And you are already seeing changes in your body? That is fantastic!
Wait, don’t you have 21″ biceps and ripped abs? Haven’t you gone from a size 12 to a size 2 yet? This can’t be right, you should be in amazing shape, it’s been a month!
The overnight weight loss myth has been promoted and perpetuated by both the mainstream media and the supplement industry for decades. Ever since the first fitness magazine was printed, the weight-loss pill was manufactured, and shows like The Biggest Loser aired on television, the average person has been increasingly convinced that losing weight should be as easy as gaining it. . This couldn’t be further from the truth!
Consider for a second how you got into this situation. Let’s say you’re trying to lose 30 pounds. To burn 1 pound, you need to use 3,500 calories (that doesn’t include your daily food intake, etc.).
30 pounds x 3,500 calories = 105,000 calories
Let’s also assume you’re on an 1,800-calorie-per-day diet and your basal metabolic rate (BMR, the number of calories you burn at complete rest) is 1,200 calories per day. With your daily activities you will probably burn about 1,700 calories/day. For every day you exercise, you burn around 2,300-2,500 calories per day, depending on the intensity of the workout.
1,800 calories consumed – 2,300 calories burned = 500 calories lost/day
3500 calories/pounds / 500 calories lost/day = 7 days to lose 1 pound of weight
7 days * 30 pounds = 210 days
210 / 30 = 7 months
So according to our math, if you trained every day and ate a strict diet of only 1,800 calories per day, you could lose 30 pounds in 7 months.
I bet you saw “7 months” and were ready to give up.
There are a few other things to consider, however. As you train, your body requires more calories, so your BMR will actually increase. Your ability to train in the gym will also improve, which could change your workouts from 600 cal/hr to 800 or even 1000 cal/hr. You may also find yourself leading a more active lifestyle outside of the gym. Even the little things add up: If you walk up a flight of stairs, 3 times a day, you’ll burn an extra 15 calories a day. Going for a 30-minute walk outside after dinner can easily burn another 100 calories.
“But it still says 7 months to lose 30 pounds.”
How long did it take you to gain those 30 pounds? It didn’t happen overnight, did it? It probably took months, maybe even years to put on all that weight. What makes you think it’s going to come off much faster than it took to put it up? How long does it take to consume 1,300 calories? A McDonald’s Big Mac, a large Coke and large French fries have 1,310 calories (source: McDonalds.ca Nutrition Calculator). You can probably finish the whole meal in 15-20 minutes. We have just shown that your initial exercise routine would burn about 600 calories per hour.
1,310 calories / 600 calories/h = 2.18 hours of exercise per 20 minutes of eating
Does this start to make sense? Just because it was easy…
Getting fit and losing weight is also about making a lifestyle change; These changes won’t happen overnight and they won’t stick if you’re not as committed to yourself as your personal trainer is. Remember Erik Chopin from season 3 of The Biggest Loser? He went from 407 pounds to 193 pounds in a matter of months with the help of personal trainers, doctors, nutritionists, etc. After he finished the show (and all the support was gone), he went back to his normal life and slowly worked his way back up to 368 pounds.
Imagine losing exactly the amount of weight you wanted with a personal trainer in 2 weeks. Now imagine being left alone and after another 2 weeks you start to gain the weight back… and after another 8 weeks you are back to your original weight. Would you remember how you lost that weight? Could you get back in the gym and get motivated to lose all the weight again? How long would it take you this time?
Fitness and weight loss are about making life-changing decisions. You’re not going to change your life permanently in 2 weeks, just like you’re not going to lose 30 pounds in the same amount of time. By working with your personal trainer, you’ll be able to lose weight and make those lifestyle changes stick.
