4 Epiphanies I Had About Reaching My Fitness Goals
I always assumed that my athletic metabolism wouldn’t let me gain much fat — then the pandemic taught me otherwise. I had to rethink my entire understanding of fitness.
I gained 25 pounds of fat during the pandemic.
The hardest part about weight gain or weight loss is that it’s so dang undetectable.
It took me gaining the most fat I’ve ever had in order to lose my ignorant “I don’t need to worry about what I eat, I’m 25 and an ex-athlete” attitude and actually do some research — and I had myriad epiphanies.
Sometimes I’m bewildered at how I can go years not understanding what others may call basic information. Hopefully, my epiphanies can help you avoid time spent aimlessly wandering the fitness world.
EPIPHANY #1 • Heck, I Was Eating a Lot
When I saw the number on the scale jump and my love handles grow, I decided to start intermittent fasting. Being in the fasted state for the morning would totally increase fat loss and I’d be fine — wrong! Intermittent fasting is a tool to reduce caloric intake, nothing more.
The issue I found with intermittent fasting is it gave me a false sense of security. If I’m skipping breakfast I can’t possibly eat in a caloric surplus so I can eat whatever I want — no.
I’d skip breakfast, eat a yummy 800–1200 calorie lunch (I didn’t know how many calories my meals were), do a half-assed home workout, then order a 1200–1500 calorie dinner (chipotle or maybe some fried chicken sammiches). Already at 2000+ calories on a good day before snacks. Then I’d crush a couple of cookies, a bowl of popcorn, maybe a few mini muffins; that’s about 800 more calories. So I’d be ending a “low calorie” day at around 2800 calories, with my typical days being closer to 3200+ calories.
That’s far too much food for me, and I had no clue. If calorie counting scares you, unfortunately, you may need to do it for at least a couple of weeks to understand how easy it is to pile on calories by accident.
EPIPHANY #2 • Doing a Workout Everyday Isn’t Always the Key
I know those are horrible words to read, but they’re unfortunately true. I used to subscribe to the flawed mentality that as long as I hit the gym (weightlifting or cardio) every day for at least 30 minutes it didn’t matter what I ate. It was all going to refuel my body, right? Wrong again, me.
The reality is that 30 minutes of cardio or even an hour of solid weightlifting is great, but it only burns a few hundred calories. There are plenty of benefits to cardio and weightlifting outside of weight loss, but unfortunately, it’s not enough calories burned to create the “eat anything and still lose weight” zone I thought I was in.
If you want to lose weight, you need to know your basal metabolic rate (BMR), otherwise you’re flying blind. Your BMR is essentially the energy in calories that it takes for your body to function even if you didn’t move a muscle or eat all day. Our BMRs are extremely critical to weight loss and they vary tremendously. Keep in mind that male BMRs are often higher than female BMRs of the same weight and height due to males (often but not always) having more lean muscle mass than females.
Jesse, my MLB pitcher brother, is 6'5" 215 lbs with lots of lean muscle mass which means his BMR is around 2400 calories — that’s before any workouts, movement, and even digestion. When you factor in digestion and typical day-to-day moving around, his maintenance calories (the number of calories for him to not gain or lose any weight) is about 2800.
For me, I’m 5'8" (my brother stole my height) 165 lbs with some lean muscle mass, and my BMR is around 1700 calories. My maintenance calories is around 2050. It’s clear how eating 3000 calories even with a nice 600 calories burned day could still put me in a 300+ calorie surplus.
And while that is not a big surplus in a day (3500 calories is ~1 pound of fat), over a year-long pandemic that amounts to a 109,500 caloric surplus! That’s 31 pounds of fat… And that’s with a decent workout and intermittent fasting every day! WHAT!?
EPIPHANY #3 • A Metabolism Isn’t Some Enigmatic Bodily Function
This may be obvious to some, but for decades I thought of the metabolism as some unquantifiable bodily function that either forced people to gain fat or wouldn’t let people gain weight no matter what — this is (mostly) false.
I have friends who say “I can’t gain weight, my metabolism won’t let me” and vise versa. It should be encouraging to learn that that is incorrect. My friend who says he can’t put on mass simply isn’t eating enough for how many calories he’s burning. And my friend who says he can’t lose weight is eating too many calories. It really is that simple. There are certainly nuances to your body's reaction to different foods, but they’re usually negligible in the grand scheme of weight loss.
That’s why BMR and maintenance calories are so critical. Once you can ballpark the number of calories your body needs, you can actually make decisions that fit into your goals and (more importantly) your lifestyle.
I should clarify that the reason the metabolism is so enigmatic is that there are many factors that go into your metabolism and health experts’ opinions vary (classic health industry). That means that while BMR calculators are helpful, they must be used as an estimate and you can only determine how accurate your BMR is by how your weight loss progress actually goes.
It’s important to note that while weight loss comes down to calories in calories out, I highly advise you to have a well-balanced nutritious diet no matter your goals. Health does not always equal aesthetics.
EPIPHANY #4 • Moving More Is the True Answer
For years I’ve looked at walking as some leisurely activity that older people do because they don’t have the ability and/or desire to workout. I saw it as a negligible activity related to fitness goals — don’t waste time being like me.
Walking is not only an important activity for your mental well-being, but it is crucial if you’re trying to lose weight. Did you know walking burns around 100 calories per mile (depending on your size)?! It’s so easy to do and puts far less stress on your body than running does. If you can do a nice workout and then go for a sweet 3-mile walk, all of a sudden you’ve likely burned 700+ calories and improved your happiness. Not bad, eh?
The most encouraging thing I learned is that simply moving more is enough to hit your goals. Have a call? Pace around while you chat. An hour of consistent pacing can burn a similar number of calories as that 3-mile walk. House a bit messy? Clean for a few hours and you could actually burn around 600 calories.
Some people love running and more power to them, but I am actually anti-running unless your goal is… to be a better runner. Long-distance running hurts my knees, shins, and ankles, so I have found that running is not sustainable for me. I’ll get a burst of energy to “start running” then my shins will hurt on the first go and I’ll say bye to running once again.
In the end, fitness is about finding sustainable programs that work for you and help you attain those often-elusive fitness goals.
HERE’S A SIMPLE PROGRAM TO GET STARTED.
- Do intense exercise for 30 minutes at least three times a week. This can be jump rope, running, sprinting, burpees, weightlifting, cycling, etc. This will help improve cardiovascular health, strength, and boost your mood.
- Do at least 3 hours of strategic movement-based exercise every day. This is a low-impact slow burn exercise. Walking, yoga, pacing around the house, cleaning, etc. This is critical to creating a consistent calorie deficit.
- Take every opportunity to move more. Take the stairs, not the elevator, walk to a nearby restaurant to pick up food rather than delivery, park a few blocks further away from your destination than you need to.
- Figure out your BMR and maintenance calories with this tool.
- Track your calorie intake for two weeks; after two weeks you will have a better grasp on how many calories are in what foods and be able to estimate yourself.
- If you want to lose a pound a week, eat in a 500 calorie deficit every day (3500 calorie deficit per week). Shooting for any deficit will eventually lead to weight loss, so don’t be so strict that you can’t sustain the diet.
- Please eat nutritious foods. While all of this is geared towards weight loss, nutrition is very important.
Do this program for 6 months and then move on to more advanced strength training, cardio, and diet! Remember to keep adjusting your BMR as your weight loss progresses as less mass = fewer calories needed to exist.
Happy fitness-ing! :)
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