Dr. Robert Whitfield explains how excessive exercise with under-fueling puts your body in conservation mode, making you feel terrible and unnecessary for changing body composition. Proper nutrition and balanced training, including recovery, builds muscle and reduces fat without the damage of restriction.
And this is because our body is trying to protect us. So your body, when it senses an energy deficit in the way of lots of exercise and potentially underfueling, goes into savior mode of let's reserve as much energy as possible. And so things in your body stop functioning the way they should. And not only do you not feel great, but it's actually not necessary at all to achieve body composition results if that's your goal. Because that's often why people are doing this is because they want a certain body composition. Right. Um, which is like, okay, is that worth it for the cost that you're doing to your body? Um, not only that, it, it might not be necessary. When we give our body— when we fuel appropriately and not underfueling, um, fueling appropriately and exercising appropriately, you can change and improve your body composition and increase muscle and decrease fat without those negative side effects. And so I think the problem is people are not educated on how to do that. Because we're just taught that no pain, no gain, more is better, no recovery days, slam your body into the ground, and that's what will work.
