Can't Lose Weight Despite Exercising I Exercising Regularly But Not Losing Weight

YouTube, what is going on? Welcome back to the channel. Welcome to the video. Got it right this time. Yes. So in this video, we're going to be talking about what to do if you are working out and you just can't lose weight. You can't see the scale go down. You're working out, you're lifting weights, you're doing cardio, but you can't get the scale to go down. And honestly, I have a conversation like this at least 5 to 10 times a day. Something to this effect. Eric, I'm working out every day and I just can't lose weight. Karen, it's so nice to talk to you. So tell me a bit more of what's going on. Okay, so listen, I'm going to this boot camp. I'm going 7 days a week. They're not even open 7 days a week. They only are open 6 days. On Sunday, I break in and I go and do the boot camp as well. I've gotten arrested a few times. It's not a big deal, but I'm going every single day. I'm drenched in sweat when I leave. Like, I don't understand why I'm not losing weight. Okay, I didn't know I was talking to a felon, but Um, okay, so you're clearly working out a lot. What does your nutrition look like? Oh yeah, these curls? Yeah, my nutrients are really showing out today, right? Your nutrients? What the fuck? No, like the food you're eating, Karen, the food. Oh, the food. Um, yeah, it's pretty good. Okay, it's a weird kind of way to answer that, but like, are you tracking your calories or— Tracking my calories? Um, no, I'm not doing that. Um, but I did see on the Starbucks menu the coffee I got this morning Was 1,000 calories. Alright, that's definitely not helping you, but let me ask you this. What about protein? Are you eating any protein? Protein? No, but Eric, get this. After our boot camp, me and the girls go to the bar and we actually get a margarita and we put protein powder in it one time. It was so funny, Eric. Okay, that sounds literally awful, Karen. Let me ask you this. What about vegetables? Like, you're eating some vegetables, right? Um, vegetable, vegetable. No, I haven't had a vegetable since like World War II. Okay, Karen, like, you do know that the only way to lose weight is to eat less calories than your body burns. It's called a calorie deficit, right? What are you saying? You're like speaking a foreign language to me, Eric. So you're saying I can't just like go to my boot camp 7 days a week and eat whatever I want and lose weight? Yes, Karen, that's actually exactly what I'm telling you, yes. This is stupid. I'm never coming to you for advice ever again, Eric. Oh, Karen, you'd be doing me a favor. So if that's you, Karen, what I hope you gathered from that interaction between Karen and myself is that when it comes to losing weight, you need to be in an overall calorie deficit. That is the only way you are going to lose weight. You can exercise all you want to, but if you are not intaking less calories than what your body burns, you will not be losing weight. So that is the first and foremost thing. You cannot out-train a bad diet. You've probably heard this before. It is very true. If you are not in a calorie deficit, if you're not eating what you should be eating, you are not going to lose body fat. Now, working out nonstop might actually be playing into why you can't stick to your diet, why you can't stick to a calorie deficit, why you're actually eating more food. So in this video, we're going to talk about Why quote unquote more is not always better. And then we're going to talk about— there's something in my eye. Wow. There we go. We're going to talk about 4 major things over here: cravings, 12 o'clock, more, and burnout. At the very end of the video, we're going to— I'm going to tell you, we're going to listen. I'm going to tell you exactly what you should be doing moving forward. Now, this video is for you if you are working out 4, 5, 6, 7 days a week, and if you can't lose weight. This is who that video— that is who this video is going to be for. And that leads me right into the next point. Most people think more is better. More workouts, more cardio, higher heart rate, more sweating, less calories. They think more is better. And I understand why logically you would think that. If you think, if I work out more, if I eat less calories, if I do more, Do more cardio, get more steps, get more workouts. I'm gonna lose weight quicker. I'm gonna lose weight faster. The results are gonna be better. In theory, I understand why that would work, but in practicality, that's not how it plays out. What I need you to understand is more is not always better. Better is better, and we're gonna talk about why right now. But I need you to understand that concept, and it's a hard concept to grasp. Sometimes I've had clients come to me who are working out 5, 6, 7 days a week, and I say, hey, we're gonna work out 3 days a week, and they like lose their shit. They're like, what is this guy talking about? Why am I gonna hire him as a coach? I'm working out 7 days a week and not seeing progress. Why would I see progress working out 3 days a week? Let's talk about why here in this next section. So number one, here's Here's what's probably happening. If you are losing weight, if you're working out nonstop and you're not losing weight, if you're working out 4, 5, 6, 7 days a week and you're not losing weight— I was going to say 8 days a week, but if, if, if there was 8 days, some of you would probably do it. Here's what's probably going on. We have learned already that if you're not in an overall calorie deficit, you will not be losing body fat. You will not lose weight, right? So why would working out more play against you when losing weight. Number 1 is you're going to be under-recovered. Again, more is not always better. You have to understand this concept. You don't change your body when you go and work out. You change your body when you go and recover from those workouts. The workout that you're doing, if you are working out for 7 days a week, which if you are, I have no clue how you do that, but let's just say you're working out for an hour, 7 days a week. Let's just say 2 hours, 7 days a week. That'd be insane, but I'll use an extreme example. If you're working out 2 hours a day, 7 days a week, that's 2 hours out of a 24-hour day. There's 22 other hours in the day. Just do the math. The other 22 hours are more important than the 2 hours. And what you have to understand about exercising is exercise is a stress that you put on your body, whether it's cardio or weights or whatever the case may be. It's a stress. Your body, how your body changes is you recover from that stress and adapt to that stress. And you adapt by growing stronger, more defined muscles and so on and so forth, right? You change your physique. But if you don't recover from the stress, you're just putting a shit ton of stress on your body and never recovering. So it's like I use the analogy of like, let's say you were building a house and you put the siding up on a wall, right? And you tear all the siding down. You like get halfway of putting it back up, you tear it down again. You put it up halfway and tear it down again. You never put the fucking siding back up and it never goes back up. You never recover. So if you're always under-recovering because you're working out so much constantly, I see this a lot with people who are, whether it's CrossFit or whether you're doing like HIIT workouts or doing a ton of cardio, it's just nonstop under-recovering. Some people refer to it as overtraining. It's more under-recovering because you're just not recovering from the exercise that you are doing. And if you don't recover from the exercise you are doing, That is going to lead to many things. Number one, you're going to have more cravings, which if you have more cravings and you're more hungry, well guess what? You're probably going to eat more calories because you have more cravings and you're hungrier. So it's much more likely you are going to eat more calories. If you eat more calories, you will not be in a calorie deficit. If you're not in a calorie deficit, then you're not going to lose body fat. This is one of the reasons why you can't out-train a bad diet. This is why you can exercise all you want, but if that leads to more cravings and you're hungrier, well then you're never going to stick to your diet and you'll never see results. That's one possible reason. And that is a real, that's a real thing. You're going to have, if you're always under-recovered, you're going to have more cravings. It is going to be that much more difficult to stick to your calorie deficit. You're putting yourself behind the 8 ball that much more. Second thing, you're going to be fatigued as hell. If you're always under-recovered, you're gonna be more fatigued, right? More tired, less energy. If you are more fatigued, less tired— I'm sorry, more fatigued, more tired, less energy— do you really think you're gonna stick to your diet? Do you really think you're gonna go cook a healthy dinner? Do you really think you're gonna get up early in the morning and meal prep or bring your food to work or do all the things necessary That you need to do in order to eat in a calorie deficit? No, you're going to go grab the fast food. You're going to have those cookies. You're going to have less willpower because you're under-recovered, so fatigued, so tired, more cravings, less willpower. The— you only have but so much willpower to go around in a given day between your workouts, between your nutrition, between this thing called, you know, life. Your spouse, your job, your kids, your pets, whatever the case may be. There's so many things going on, so your willpower is going to dwindle down. So when the nighttime comes around and you have worked all day and you've dealt with your kids, you've dealt with your spouse, you know, you've done your fucking 2-hour cardio session, you're fatigued, you're exhausted, you're tired, your willpower's down. What do you think is going to happen? Overeating at night, snacking at night, overeating in calories at night. Which means you're not gonna be in a calorie deficit, which means you're not gonna see any progress. So under-recovering is the biggest reason why you are not seeing progress. And this comes from, like I just said, not recovering from your workouts. Your workouts are just half of the battle. If you work out but you don't recover, that is a 50%. You're getting a 50 out of 100. In any school system, that is an F. That is a big fat fucking F. That is failing. You would be failing that test, failing that class. So you need to have both aspects of this, which is why we're gonna talk about what to do later in this video to help you recover. So that's number 1. Number 2, time. Everyone always tells me, Eric, I got no time. I don't have time to meal prep. I don't have time to cook breakfast. I don't have time to do this. I don't have time to cook a healthy dinner. I'm always so busy. I'm always running around. But yet you somehow have time to work out for 6 hours a week? That is blasphemy to me. I have no clue how you do that. Time. The more time you are working out, you're right, you only have but so much time in a day. You are absolutely right. And you know what? A lot of the clients I coach are parents. They have young children or children or whatever the case may be. They have a job, they have a social life, they have a spouse, they have soccer games on the weekends and this and that. Yes, you are busy. But you do realize the more time that you spend working out is the less time you can potentially spend on your nutrition, which your nutrition is the main driver of fat loss. So you're not gonna meal prep, you're not gonna cook dinner, you're not gonna cook that healthy dinner, you're gonna go and eat fast food instead. You're gonna skip breakfast or skip this or skip that 'cause I don't have time, which means you're gonna be super hungry By the time dinnertime rolls around, that means you're gonna overeat, you're gonna binge eat at night 'cause you haven't eaten all day long, and this cycle of just overeating stems from not having any time. But somehow you have 7 hours a week to work out. That just— it doesn't make any sense to me. So if that's you, listen up 'cause we're gonna talk about what to do later in this video. That's number 2. Number 3, you think because you are working out all the time, that gives you an excuse to eat whatever you want. And it may even be, let's say you're tracking calories, for example. There's basically 2 ways this could go. Let's say you're tracking calories, for example. One of the biggest things, and I have a video here on YouTube, I can link it above if you want, if you wanna watch it after this. Um, one of the biggest things people ask me is, Eric, when I go work out, I burn 500 calories. Can I go eat those calories back? My answer is, hell no, Cheryl, do not eat those calories back. For many reasons, like I talk about in that video, but the main reason is you're not burning that many calories that your calorie tracker or the treadmill or your Fitbit or your Apple Watch says you burned. So you think, oh sweet, I'm supposed to eat 1,500 calories, but I just burned 500 calories, so I'm gonna go eat 2,000 calories 'cause I worked out. That's why you're not losing weight. It's backfiring on you 'cause you're not actually burning that many calories. Those trackers are not accurate. So let's say you think you burned 500 calories, You maybe burned 200, maybe. So you're eating 2,000 calories 'cause you think you burned 500 calories, when in reality you maybe burned 200. So now if you were supposed to eat 1,500 calories, you're eating 2,000 calories. So you're taking yourself out of that calorie deficit, which means you are not going to lose body fat. And let me be very clear, some people take that and think, oh, I can't eat after my workout. No, you can eat after your workout. That's totally fine. What I mean is overall your calorie intake should stay the same. When I have a client who comes to me and starts training, I don't even consider for half a second how many calories they're gonna burn during their workouts. It doesn't even cross my mind. It's literally never once in my coaching career of almost 5 years now have I once asked a client, how many calories did you burn during your workout? 'Cause it doesn't matter. And yet you're probably thinking, I need to burn more calories during my workout. No, you do not need to burn more calories during your workout. Again, that's probably what's getting you in this position to begin with because you're trying to kill yourself doing hours of cardio and doing all these HIIT workouts and not seeing any progress. It's backfiring on you. So stop worrying about how many calories you burn during your workout and don't think just because you worked out you can eat more calories. That is kind of the second tier of this. If you're not tracking calories, A lot of people get in the mindset of, well, you know, I did do an hour of cardio earlier and I was sweating really hard and I was out of breath and I really worked hard. So yeah, you know what? I can have these 3 donuts and you know what? There's nothing wrong with having 3 donuts. Cool. Go ahead. But if you're not in a calorie deficit, you're not going to lose body fat. So just because you're working out a ton doesn't mean you can just go eat whatever you want and it'll be totally fine because I'll just, Burn it off the next day. Not to mention, that's just a surefire way to develop an unhealthy relationship with food, using food as a reward or using exercise as a, uh, a vice to punish yourself if you overeat. That happens a lot as well. People, you know, they quote unquote overeat because, you know, they're under-recovered and they're super tired and they're starving because they have more cravings because all they do is work out and they never recover. So, they overeat at night, they binge eat at night, they wake up the next morning like, oh, shit, well, I overate, let me go do more cardio, and you just play right into this factor that much more. So, the cycle of more cardio, overeat, think I fucked up, leads to more cardio, leads to more overeating, fuck up, quote unquote, fuck up again, more cardio, more overeating, it's a vicious cycle. You have to break the cycle. Break the chain. Stop thinking you can just eat more food and/or stop thinking more cardio is the answer. Like I said over here, more is not always better. Better is better. So that is the third reason, which leads me into the fourth one, which is just burnout. If you are exercising a ton, you know, 5, 6, 7 days a week, that is a lot of exercise. And I know you might think, well, no, it's not. I can do it. Listen, I've coached people for 5 years now. I have a handful of clients who work out 5 days a week. Handful. I think literally a handful. I think there's like 5 of my clients right now who work out 5 days a week, maybe. But, either way, I've never had a client work out over 5 days a week. Never. Not once. Not once in my coaching career have I had a client work out more than 5 days a week. And, if you go to my website, you'll see all the client testimonials on there, all the pictures, all of this, all of that. What you need to understand is this is not a game of doing more and being more strict and, you know, trying to do all these workouts to lose weight as quickly as humanly possible. Again, more is not better. What's gonna happen is you're gonna work out for 5, 6, 7 days a week for 1, 2, 3, 4 weeks if you're lucky. Hell, even more, who knows? But eventually you're going to burn out. Because you're not gonna recover and life is gonna happen. I vividly remember I had a client, her name was Cindy. Cindy came to me working out 6 to 7 days a week. We switched her and got her on a real program, 3 days a week strength training. At first, she was like, hmm, no clue how this is gonna work 'cause I'm going from working out 6 to 7 days a week to 3 days a week. Since then, Cindy has lost over 50 pounds. She has— Completely changed her relationship with food, has not had a binge eating episode in over 9 months, and is seeing tremendous progress. Why? She told me, she was like, Eric, if I missed a workout on my 6-day-a-week workout program, I thought I was a failure. I thought I fucked up. I thought, what's the point? I'll just restart on Monday. So let's say Wednesday came around and she missed her Wednesday workout. You can probably relate to this. She missed her Wednesday workout. She thought, well, fuck, I already missed Wednesday. I might as well just keep going. It's already Thursday. It'll be Friday and then it'll be the weekend. So fuck it. I'll just restart on Monday. And that happens over and over and over and over because you get so fatigued and so exhausted and God forbid something comes up where you can't make it to the gym that day or you can't work out that day. That's not realistic. It's not sustainable and it's not something you are going to be able to be consistent Consistent with, you're gonna get burnt out, fatigue, exhaustion. Life is gonna happen. You're not gonna be able to keep up that schedule. So you can't stick with it. And if you can't stick with it, then you're not gonna see any progress. I'd much rather you follow a B minus workout program with 90% consistency than follow this A plus plus seven time a week workout program with 40% consistency. Consistency, because you're not going to see any results with 40% consistency. You are going to see results with 90% consistency because anything done consistently is going to breed results. Consistency breeds results. Perfection breeds inconsistency. Inconsistency is not going to give you results. Consistency is what gives you results. So you're going to get— you're getting burnt out. You're not sticking with it. You're working out for 2 weeks or 3 weeks. And then falling off for a week or two, working out for 4 weeks, falling off for 4 weeks. You can't be consistent 'cause what you're doing is not sustainable. So, now knowing what's going on, how do we fix it? I have 2 main things for you. Number one, if you're working out more than 4 times a week, stop. Stop doing it. Go to 3 times a week or 4 times a week workouts. Make them strength training based, strength training focused. If you want to, I have an entire video here on my YouTube channel on how to create a workout routine. I also have them on my website, ericrobertsfitness.com. Feel free to check it out. Totally free. There's nothing else there. It's totally fucking free. Work out three to four times a week. You are going to thank me a month from now, three months from now, six months from now because you'll actually be doing it. 3 months from now and 6 months from now and 12 months from now. And like I just said, consistency breeds results. So if you can follow it consistently, you will be seeing progress. So back down your workouts to 3 to 4 times a week. You're gonna ask me, Eric, what about cardio? I'm gonna be very honest with you. 90% of my clients do this much cardio, dedicated cardio. We don't do an hour on the stair stepper. We don't do any HIIT cardio. 90% of my clients do strength training 3 to 4 times a week and get 5,000 to 10,000 steps per day, anywhere in between that range. It varies, obviously it varies for client because everybody's so different, but a range, 5,000 to 10,000 steps per day. You know, this could be parking farther away from work, this could be taking a 15-minute walk after dinner before bed, this could be taking a walk in the morning with the dog. I don't care what it is. Get outside and do some walking, whatever the case may be. You know, going on the treadmill for 10 minutes after your workout to cool down. I don't care. 5,000 to 10,000 steps per day. Strength training 3 to 4 times a week, 5,000 to 10,000 steps per day. That is your workout side of things. Now, with your nutrition, what I want you to do is those 1, 2, or 3 days that you were working out more than 4 days a week, Take all of that time and put that towards your nutrition. Put that towards prepping food. Put that towards cooking a healthy dinner. Put that towards cooking breakfast. Put it towards cooking lunch. Put it towards your nutrition. So let's say, just for fun, let's say you were working out 7 days a week for an hour, which I've had many people try to do. That's 3 extra hours, at least 3 to 4 extra hours That you can now put towards your nutrition. You can put towards prepping your lunches for the week. You can put towards cooking a healthy dinner. You can put towards counting calories, using your food scale. Put it towards your nutrition. I promise you the weight is gonna magically, magically start to come off. 'Cause your problem is not exercise. Your issue is nutrition. So that same time you were gonna spend working out, you were gonna spend that time with fitness anyway. You were just going to do it doing fucking 3 hours of cardio, which just sounds awful, but you were going to use that time for cardio. So you know what? There's something in my eye again. Use that same time to put it towards your nutrition. It's the same time. You were going to use it anyway. Don't make excuses here. Go meal prep. Go cook some healthy lunches for the week. Go cook a healthy breakfast. Go do something with your nutrition. Learn how to count your calories. Use your food scale. Grocery shop. Do something with your nutrition because that is going to make a bigger impact on your weight loss than you doing an extra 3 hours of cardio. I promise you. I promise you. I've seen it time and time and time again. So that is exactly what you should do. Cut your workouts down to 3 to 4 days a week. Use the extra time that you were going to use for fitness anyway. Put that towards meal prep and nutrition. And from there, I promise you, if you're in a calorie deficit, you will see weight loss progress. It's just that simple. It's not easy. God, it's not easy, but it is that simple. If you need to know how many calories to eat to lose body weight, I'll put my totally free calorie calculator here above. It's somewhere up there. Go check it out. It's on my YouTube channel. Again, it's once again, as everything else here, Totally free. Go check it out. Eat those calories, eat the protein I talk about in there as well. Do your strength training workouts, get 5,000 to 10,000 steps, and that's it, man. I promise you with all of my heart, you will see progress because you'll be recovered. You'll have more energy. You'll have more endurance. You'll have more willpower. You'll have more prepped foods. Your nutrition will be more on point. You cannot out-train a bad diet. That is why right now you're not losing weight. If you do those 2 simple things, Promise you with all of my heart, you will start seeing progress. Any questions, any concerns, drop below. If you like the video, give a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, hit that little bell notification somewhere down here. Just hit it. Other than that, thank you for watching and we'll talk soon.