JJ Virgin explains why weighted vests can help preserve muscle and burn more fat during weight loss. She recommends starting with 5% of your body weight, wearing it during daily activities like housework or walking, and pairing it with high protein intake and resistance training. NEAT, the energy burned through everyday movement, is the most changeable part of your metabolism.
Here's what's crazy that's going on right now in the influencer social media space. I got called out as a grifter for promoting weighted vests. I kid you not. And I have no clue why this would be controversial. I mean, to me, I look at this, I go, these are not really expensive. The risks are low, the rewards are high. Why wouldn't you? Now, might help with bone mineral density. There still needs to be more studies. It seems logical it would help a little bit. It's not gonna really help you build muscle because you don't have enough of a load, right? You need load, pushed hard in short bursts to get you stronger. But it could really help with that resting metabolic rate. So let's break that all down. So it makes sense. You have your total daily energy expenditure. Of that, you have thermic effect of food, that's counts for about 5 to 15%. More protein, higher TEF. You have your resting metabolic rate, that's about 50 to 60% of your calories, like what you would do at rest. And then you have your activity and your activity thermogenesis is both your exercise and your non-exercise. And that's about 30%, but only about 5% of that is exercise, right? The rest of it— and it could be 20%— but the rest of it's really non-exercise activity thermogenesis, which means that's the most modifiable. But you gotta trick yourself, 'cause one of the things that our body tends to do is maintain homeostasis. So if you do a hard workout, what do you tend to do? Move less the rest of the day, right? If you lose weight, you move less. If you eat less, you move less. If you eat more, you move more. Your body tends to maintain homeostasis. One of the first things that I like to have people do is monitor their activity level throughout the day, monitor their steps, because then we ensure that we keep that NEAT up. I've seen too often that someone will go to the gym and then they'll get about 4,000 steps in the entire day because they sit the rest of the day and they basically undo the results of the gym. So we wanna make sure that you're monitoring NEAT. I use a simple little Oura ring. You can use a Fitbit, a Garmin, you know, Apple Watch, but I use this and I track it on my phone. And the minimum you really wanna hit each day is 8,000 steps. So that's the first thing because NEAT is really that most modifiable thing that you can do. Now again, if you started losing weight and your resting metabolic rate is going down because you don't have to carry as much weight around, what could we do? Well, we could add 5% of your body weight back on with a weighted vest, you know, and build up to 10%, but you start really light. I mean, 5%. And remember, we're trying to lose 0.5 to 1% of our body weight a week so that we're holding on to or building muscle while we're losing body fat. So this is just a little bit. You can buy one of those weighted vests where you just can add little bits of weight throughout and get used to it. You're not wearing this all day long. Start with an hour, maybe build up to 2 to 4 hours. This is not like, now I'm going to spend 8 hours a day in a weighted vest. You know, it's just part of the time. Maybe this is something you add in just when you're doing housework or you're going out for a walk, walk the dogs. I have very little dogs, so a weighted vest is super helpful because otherwise I'm basically doing a lot of standing while they're sniffing. But this is where you could use one of these. And again, you, you know, watch what you've got going on. If you've got anything going on with joints, get some medical clearance for it. By the way, if you want my video on the number 1 fat loss secret most people miss where I explain the full breakdown of NEAT. Check this out because NEAT is really— when I look at everything, NEAT's the thing you can modify. And all we're doing is adding a little weight back to make your body have to work a little bit harder as you're doing all these other things. We're trying to trick your body into burning more without having to work out more. Because again, quite often when you work out more, then you do less NEAT. So we're just putting the weight back on externally instead of doing it internally, right? So we're not having the negative effects on your health. So we're basically getting the calorie burn benefits that you had before you lost the weight, which— how cool is that? So to me, it makes a ton of sense. I'm not sure why people have got like this weirdo, uh, whole emotional response to weighted vests. And I think the important thing is to really look at how you can start light with this. Again, you know, 5% of your body weight to start. Just start light, start wearing it around the house, low-impact activities, chores, maybe you're on your standing desk. I've been running a Q&A sessions for my, one of my programs, and one gal is always on her walking treadmill and with her weighted vest on. I'm like, so fantastic. And again, it's something that you build up to, but it's got to be part of the whole program. You're eating your high protein, you're doing your resistance training, and then you're pumping your NEAT up. You're adding a little bit of power to your NEAT by throwing on the weighted vest. Again, remember, One of the other reasons I promote resistance training is it's another way that you can impact your resting metabolic rate. Higher muscle mass, better resting metabolic rate. So there's some other cool things too.
