Fat-Burning Workouts – Myth or Fact?

Look I get it, the conventional wisdom has it that the type of workout, popularised by F45 and similar group fitness classes, is that running frantically from one heart-pounding exercise to the next until you’re on their knees, exhausted, in a puddle of your own sweat will help boost your metabolism and burn fat.

And you don’t need to look far to see that on fitness advertisements, magazine covers and commercial social media posts - that metabolisms will be revved, bellies will be flattened, and kilos will be lost. So, it must be right? Or is it?

In 2012, a team of researchers in Denmark. recruited a group of overweight young men to run or cycle six days a week for 13 weeks. Half of them exercised for 30 minutes a day, burning around 300 calories in each workout. The others exercised for twice as long, burning roughly 600 calories each time.

Counterintuitively, the men who burned the most calories did not lose the most body fat. The fat loss relatively similar, meaning that the men in the 600-calorie-per-workout group ended the study no leaner than those who did half as much exercise.

Well, let’s consider is the effect a workout has on hunger. If your workout stimulates your appetite, then most of us will end up replacing the calories you worked so hard to burn, if not more.

Research also indicates that some people are compensators, meaning they eat more following exercise and others are non-compensators, meaning they do not eat more after exercising and in some cases may even eat less.

Personally, I have experienced both phenomena – and find these days I have little appetite after say a heavy leg session. I’ve also seen some of my clients and workout partners eat more the harder they train.

Consequently, if you eat more, and especially if you overeat, then you will likely negate the calorie deficit in your fat loss phase.

That’s just one way exercise is linked to more food consumption. There’s also a phenomenon known as moral licensing, where being “good” gives you permission to be “bad.”

Whilst, I have seen this in many of my clients when they first come to me… I personally think this is also one of those family myths that we unconsciously adopt from or families and society.

For example, my mum used to say to me growing up “oh, I can eat anything I want as long as I exercise” and would proceed to call me lazy for not being thin. We’re also bombarded daily with hyper palatable and ultra-processed food, whilst simultaneously being shamed for being too sedentary.

That aside, increased appetite isn’t the only way your body can compensate for exercise. It can also downregulate the amount of movement you do between workouts.

You’ve probably heard of non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT for short. First described by Dr. James Levine of the Mayo Clinic in the early 2000s, it refers to the calories you burn during physical activities other than sleeping, eating, or structured exercise—things like typing, cooking, gardening, housework, or even just shifting around in your chair.

It may sound trivial, but you’d be surprised at how much NEAT contributes to our daily calorie expenditure, with the difference between two people being as much as 2,000 calories a day.

At rest, on average, most of us will burn about a calorie per kilogram of body weight per hour, which is called your resting metabolic rate, or RMR.

Workouts that are intense, such as HIIT and F45 style of training, do typically burn a lot of calories however they are also physically and mentally taxing.

Which means they can often leave you feeling tired, exhausted, and sore — which, of course, is exactly what many people are seeking. Thinking that the harder the workout, the better it is.

But there are consequences to an apocalyptic “go hard or go home” workout. Once you leave the gym, you’re more likely to move much less than you would have otherwise and make poorer decisions because you’re not well resourced and your willpower may be depleted. In other words, you simply don’t have the energy to do the things you need to.

And this can look like getting Uber Eats instead of cooking a meal from scratch. Instead of doing household chores, you’ll put them off, or pay someone else to do them. Instead of taking a walk after dinner, you’ll binge Stranger Things on Netflix. Okay, to be fair… I would probably binge on Stranger Things anyway!

Essentially, what you’re doing is compensating, or over-compensating – where this moves beyond the realm of reasonable recovery efforts, by expending fewer overall calories.

This can mean that your overall energy balance stays about the same despite all the workouts you’re doing and creates a pendulum swing effect on us.

If you’ve ever over-stimulated your central nervous system (CNS) due an incredibly stressful, or pro-longed stressful event… then many of us will then experience a period where our autonomic nervous system (ANS) system has an equal and opposite effect on us. Have you ever experienced a period of time, where getting out of bed or getting on with your day feels as easy as wading through concrete post a stressful event?

That’s a similar example of overcompensation.

Generally, when it comes to fat loss, the food you eat (or don’t eat) is a lot more important than what you do in the gym. However, our metabolisms are quite complex meaning that manipulating any aspect of it will affect other aspects. It also constantly adapts, and we tend to compensate in way or another.

That means that “fat-blasting” workouts may burn heaps of calories, but overall, it may not produce the desired outcome. Especially, not in isolation. Fat loss is an energy-balance puzzle that is nuanced from individual to individual.

My suggestion then, is to shift your focus from workouts being a way to burn fat or judging a workout based on its fat burning effectiveness.

Base your workouts on what you enjoy doing consistently, and something that enhances not detracts from your lifestyle preferences or other obligations.

In other words, play the long game. Focus on increasing strength, increasing endurance, and increasing muscle mass. All of which will contribute to a longer, healthier life, over time, will help you get leaner.

Fat-Burning Workouts – Myth or Fact?

How the Body Fights Back, and What to do Instead

How the body fights back

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Looking to Get on Track with Your Body Transformation Goals?

That’s NEAT

Here’s how this relates to you:

Turning down the metabolic dial

What this means for you?

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