It pains me to continue to see these classes being offered that have folks…via one means of excessive exercise or another…go on these 1/2 hour to hour-long cardio sessions that have them sweating, exhausted, and buzzed afterwards, hoping and expecting that this is the only way to lose weight and fat.
It seems as if there is a deliberate attempt commercially to make people continue to believe in this methodology.
Fact is, killing yourself with these workout methods CAN work.
The problem:
Your body becomes so accustomed to this level of activity, that it goes into “preservation” mode, re-balancing the speed of one’s metabolism, as if to prepare for a famine or other level of scarcity.
The body seems to interpret excessive activity as a warning sign to “brace” itself against future taxing activities, and so adjusts the metabolism, per what the person eats and continues to do activity-wise, to compensate for any potential emergency situation.
A built-in protective mechanism that seeks to find new ways to store extra fat for needed use.
This is why, as most people have discovered for decades now, that once this high level of activity stops, the fat and weight can come back on aggressively, especially if the diet has not changed to compensate for it.
The “lifestyle” approach is the newest catchword for the workout and diet programs of the day. We like to think that our programs were among the first to suggest the “lifestyle” approach.
When taken on from this standpoint…and only doing as much activity as is necessary to accomplish results, and understanding and using new foods from that point forward…results just tend to come, and tend to STICK.
It remains bizarre as to why these other “insanity” (etc) programs continue to be pushed and sold…when the science, and plenty of anecdotal proof exist, to show this kind of workout intensity and stress on the body, on a continual daily basis…simply is not necessary.