JJ Virgin debunks three fat-loss myths: excessive cardio raises stress hormones and increases hunger, aggressive calorie cuts trigger the body to conserve energy, and keto doesn't guarantee fat loss without a deficit. Sustainable weight loss requires a calorie deficit, whatever method works for you.
All right, so let's talk about some of the big myths out there, urban legends about losing fat. Now, one of the first ones is that you need to do loads of cardio to lose fat. In fact, I will tell you that what I was taught in graduate school is that you don't lift weights till you lose the weight. By the way, nothing could be farther from the truth. And here's the reality that we know with cardio is that if you're trying to maintain weight by cardio alone, one of the things we know with excess cardio is that it can actually cause you to lose some muscle alongside the fat. So Yes, cardio burns a lot of calories. However, cardio can also, chronic cardio, not short-term, can raise stress hormones, can make you lose muscle. So excess cardio is not the answer to losing weight. The other thing we also know about excess cardio is, you probably noticed it, it makes you hungry. That's kind of gonna counteract all those benefits. So you might go do a big cardio workout, go, "I'm hungry," and eat more than what you burned off in the cardio workout, 'cause let's face it, You know, you go out for a run and maybe you burn off 500 calories. That's really easy to overeat by just going to the Starbucks after your workout. All right, so that's the first thing is over-cardio. Now I'm not saying don't do cardio. I'm just saying don't try to use this as your big fat loss strategy. It's doing movement as a part of the strategy. The next one that I see is too much caloric restriction. And one of the things we know about caloric restriction is that your body is very smart and will try to outsmart your efforts. And one of the things that can happen when you do caloric restriction is your body goes, you know what, I'm going to conserve some energy here. This is why it's so important to wear an Oura Ring or an Apple Watch or one of these trackers, because we will naturally start to move less when we lower our calories. We'll conserve energy. You know that you've heard that, you know, chronic caloric restriction over time can lower thyroid function, but just in the short term, it can just lower your NEAT. And if you lower your NEAT, you burn less calories. So your body is adapting, right? And then the third one is keto. Now, I view diets as tools, and I always say pick the best diet for the outcome you're trying to accomplish. If I was struggling with something like cancer, keto would be my go-to. But if you're looking at keto for fat loss, yes, a ketogenic diet is going to help you burn more fat for fuel. But if you're eating a high dietary fat keto diet with more calories, you're burning off excess fat from the diet, not from your body. So that is the important thing here, is that's not necessarily going to help you burn off body fat. It just makes you better at burning fat overall. Truly, in order to be able to burn off body fat, we still need to be in a deficit. There's just a variety of ways to accomplish that.
