We see that it doesn't help for weight loss, doesn't help for fat loss.

People spend more time at the gyms doing cardio than they ever have and yet we have a worse obesity problem than we ever have.

Well, that's bad news, isn't it?

That is bad news.

In the book, if I remember correctly,

you say that exercise isn't the best approach, isn't the only approach, one should consider when thinking about dropping weight and reducing waist size.

A lot of people might be surprised by that.

Yeah, so, some of the concepts that I talk about in the book around exercise, the way I phrase it is, I want you to get more activity.

One of the mistakes that I see people making is that they focus on doing periods of exercise.

They say, "I'm gonna go to the gym and work out for an hour," "I'm gonna go run and," you know, "for an hour,"

and they don't pay attention to getting enough activity throughout the rest of their day.

So, I try to get people to refocus on just getting more activity throughout your day.

And then when it comes to your exercise and your metabolic health,

the most important part of building metabolic health through exercise is going to be building and maintaining your muscle.

Muscle is very unique when it comes to our metabolic health.

Muscle is metabolically active throughout your day.

And, so, when you focus on building and maintaining muscle, it's going to better support your health, your metabolic health,

than if we're just trying to do the cardio exercise and burning the extra calories during that time that we are exercising.

'Cause you say here on page 72, "...keep it in mind that research shows cardio is an unreliable tactic for fat loss."

That's a shock to most people because we've been taught that cardio is everything.

Right.

So, when we look at the science around cardio, you know, chronic cardio exercise, what most people think of as jogging or running at the gym,

we see that it doesn't help for weight loss, doesn't help for fat loss.

And that's why I don't want people to focus on cardio.

And, you know, when we look at the macro level of this,

we have more gyms today than we ever have, people spend more time at the gyms doing cardio than they ever have,

and, yet, we have a worse obesity problem than we ever have.

So, cardio is not effective for weight loss⏤science is pretty clear on that

(That) Doesn't mean that cardio doesn't have benefits, and I'm not telling people, "Stop all the cardio that you're doing."

I just don't want people to think that only by doing cardio are they going to be able to lose weight and lose fat and have long-term success around that.

Why, you know⏤

I think that surprises people because, you know when I do cardio, I sweat.

Yep.

And I can feel it just⏤it feels like the fat is melting and it's pouring off my skin.

- So, I'm like, you know, I must be losing weight. - Right.

But, so, it seems like a bit of a head spin that... that that's not helping me lose weight.

Why isn't it helping me lose weight?

Yeah, there are two reasons that it doesn't help you lose weight.

Number one is, for most people, after they do a lot of cardio, they get hungry and they eat more,

so, they kind of counterbalance whatever extra calories they may have burnt off doing the cardio.

Is that... is that in-built or is that just, you know, it's that the brain...?

I think it is; I think it's our body's, sort of, homeostatic mechanism.

And the other problem with, you know, thinking you're going to lose weight just by doing cardio is, it's really relying on the calories-in-calories-out model.

So, again, the underlying assumption there is that if we just burn more calories, that will compensate for the extra calories that we've been eating.

And, again, we see that that doesn't work over and over again; we know that our body actually adjusts the amount of calories that it burns.

And if you go and you do that hour at the gym, during that hour, you're going to have burnt more calories,

but during the other 23 hours of the day, your body is actually gonna burn less calories to make up for that.

Well, that's bad news, isn't it?

That is bad news.

And... and, you know, the extra point there is, when we build muscle, muscle bui⏤muscle burns more calories throughout the day.

So, that's the other reason that the focus on muscle-building is really the most effective way to exercise your way to weight loss.

So, ok, so, weight-lifting, you would advise as a preferential way to lose fat and improve our metabolic health versus just, like, going for a jog.

Right.

Even if I'm burning 500 calories on my jog versus 500 ca⏤burning 500 calories doing weight-lifting.

You think that the weight-lifting calories burn are more important for weight loss than the jogging calories.

Yeah, so, when we look at the science around building muscle resistance exercise, as I said, we see two unique benefits to building muscle.

Number one is that that muscle is going to be more metabolically active tissue that we're gonna have on us all the time.

So, we're gonna be burning more calories throughout the day, despite, you know, the activity that we're doing.

But... but aren't we just gonna get more hungry?

We don't seem to get more hungry from those, I... I guess, from that metabolic activity.

It's not the same as doing the cardio making us more hungry.

The other unique thing about muscle, though, to understand, is that, as we age,

the more that we are able to maintain muscle, the better quality of life that we have and the longer we are going to live.

And again, this has been shown in repeated studies, many different areas, heart disease included,

that building and maintaining muscle as we get older is one of the best strategies for living longer and for living better.

It's a bit of a downward spiral, though, isn't it?

Because, you know, I get older, maybe I'm a little bit more inactive, maybe I retire, and then I lose muscle.

And as I lose muscle, I become more inactive, and the spiral, the cycle continues.

- So that, you know... - But it doesn't need to be that way.

We can maintain muscle throughout our older age.

And the keys to doing that is to maintain your metabolic health, is to be eating enough protein, is to be eating whole real food,

and is to be continuing to do resistance exercise, resistance activities throughout your life span.

And we can actually maintain muscle as we get older.

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