Why am I not seeing results at the gym?

Why am I not seeing results at the gym?

Are you working out regularly and not seeing the results you want? Do you want to change your body, and just can’t seem to get there? I can tell you WHY!

There are 2 main reasons why so many of us go to the gym day in and day out and never see the results we desire.

1. Doing too much cardio, and not enough resistance training
2. Thinking you can ‘work off’ what you eat.

Now I KNOW most of you think I am crazy when I say you are doing too much cardio. But hear me out. An hour plus cardio a day several days a week is too much cardio. Too much of it depletes muscle mass, and muscle BURNS fat, even while you are at rest. So the more muscle you have, the more you burn – even while you sleep! Also, if you can work out for more than an hour – you are NOT working out hard enough. (Now if you are training for a marathon, or a contest, or taking a 90 minute yoga class because you like it, this is different).

Again, I KNOW a lot of you women are saying –I do cardio because I do not want to bulk up. It is a MYTH that women can bulk up. When you put on muscle, you do not put muscle on like a man. Strength training does not equate with body building. It can be anywhere from training with weights, bands, your own body weight and/or Kettlebells.

NOTE: It is VERY hard work for most MEN to bulk up, and they make 10-15 times the testosterone women do. It would be nearly impossible for a woman to get bulky. Strength training instead makes you leaner, toned, and aids more in weight loss than cardio does.

Muscle requires about an extra 50 calories a day to keep alive, so even with adding just ONE lb of muscle you burn an extra 1400 calories a month, or 16,800 a year – enough to keep off almost 5 lbs – by resting! And that’s with only ONE lb of muscle. Put on 3 lbs, and you’ll triple that. Putting on muscle does NOT mean putting on bulk. Muscle takes up far less space than fat does. So adding some extra muscle can actually make you smaller.

I hear it all the time – I don’t want to bulk, I just want to tone. Well, do you know what toning is? It is building muscle. What gives you that toned look? It is muscle – plain and simple. There is a huge difference, and as I stated earlier, it is nearly impossible for women to get bulky. We just do not have the body mechanics for it.

Next - EXERCISE IS NOT AN EXCUSE TO EAT. A fitness class might burn off 1.5 slices of pizza that you ate in 1.5 minutes. Don’t kid yourself. The attitude – I will just work it off in the gym later - will get you into trouble every time. Sure, perhaps your body now needs more calories with a more vigorous workout, so eat more of the right stuff. Most major health organizations throughout the world recommend that you should eat 5-6 servings each of fruits and vegetables every day. Each time you go to eat or grab a snack – think of how many servings you have had of your fruits and veggies. Then eat those instead. It is actually not that easy to eat that many fruits and veggies in a day.
Only about 10% of the population actually gets the required amount. Most people do not even come close.

So – are you having trouble getting in your amount of fruits and veggies each day? Do you know what kind of a difference you can make in your life if you have proper nutrition???? I encourage people to eat 5 servings of fruits and 5 servings of vegetables per day. Sneak them into smoothies is often one of the easiest ways to do it, in my humble opinion.

In summary, if you want to lose weight is it much more about what you eat than what you are doing for exercise. You can lose a substantial amount of weight through dieting alone- but NOT through exercise alone. You cannot work off what you eat.
However, if you want to tone your body it is much more about your exercise program than your diet. You cannot get toned arms or a six pack with dieting alone.
If you are dieting, but not getting the toned body you want, you need to change your exercise routine. If you workout hard all the time, and not seeing results, you need to change your dieting habits!