So you’ve been working out with your personal trainer and you’re starting to see results. Great! How long have you been training? Two weeks, a month? And are you already seeing changes in your body? That is fantastic!
Wait, don’t you have 21 “biceps and six pack 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 myth of weight loss overnight 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 made, and shows like The Biggest Loser were aired on television, the average person has become increasingly convinced that losing weight should be as easy as weight gain. This couldn’t be further from the truth!
Consider for a second how you got into this situation. Let’s say you are trying to lose 30 pounds. To burn 1 pound, you need to use 3,500 calories (that’s not including your daily food intake, etc.).
30 pounds x 3,500 calories = 105,000 calories
Let’s also say you’re sticking to a 1,800 calorie / day diet and your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR, the number of calories you burn at complete rest) is 1,200 calories / day. With your daily activities, you will probably burn about 1,700 calories per day. For each day that you exercise, you burn between 2,300 and 2,500 calories per day, depending on the intensity of the exercise.
1,800 calories consumed – 2,300 calories burned = 500 calories lost / day
3,500 calories / pound / 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 just 1,800 calories / day, you could lose 30 pounds in 7 months.
I bet he saw “7 months” and was ready to give up.
However, there are a few other things to consider. As you train, your body requires more calories, so your BMR will increase. Your ability to train in the gym will also improve, potentially changing your workouts from 600cal / hr to 800 or even 1,000cal / hr! You can also find yourself leading a more active lifestyle outside of the gym. Even the little things add up – if you go up a flight of stairs, 3 times a day, you’ll burn an extra 15 calories a day. Going for a walk 30 minutes 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 put on those 30 pounds? It didn’t happen overnight, did it? It probably took months, maybe even years, to gain all that weight. What makes you think that it is going to come off much faster than it took to put on? How long does it take to consume 1,300 calories? At McDonald’s Big Mac, the large Coke and the large French fries have 1,310 calories (source: McDonalds.ca Nutrition Calculator). You can probably finish all that food in 15-20 minutes. We just finished showing that your initial exercise routine would burn about 600 calories per hour.
1,310 calories / 600 calories / hour = 2.18 hours of exercise for 20 minutes of food
Is it starting to make sense? Just because it was easy …
Getting fit and losing weight also involves a lifestyle change; These changes will not happen overnight and will not be sustained if you are not as committed as your Personal Trainer to you. Do you 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 the show was over (and all the support was gone), he returned to his normal life and gradually climbed back up to 368 pounds.
Imagine losing exactly the amount of weight you wanted with a personal trainer in 2 weeks. Now imagine that you were left alone and after another 2 weeks you started to regain the weight … and after another 8 weeks you returned to your original weight. Would you remember how you lost that weight? Could you get back to the gym and motivate yourself 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 are not going to permanently alter your life in 2 weeks, just as you are not going to lose 30 pounds in the same amount of time. By working with your personal trainer, you will be able to lose weight and keep those lifestyle changes in place.