Working out hard is, well, hard. Will it get you fit? That depends upon your definition of fitness. If you can increase your work capacity across broad time and modal domains, you should be fit, right? Is a healthy body part of being fit? If so, then what does body composition/percentage of body fat, cholesterol levels, triglyceride levels, blood pressure, etc. tell us about health and fitness? It isn't enough to just go hard and fast during your workouts. Fitness necessarily includes health. Without good health, you will not optimize your fitness and your ability to increase your work capacity will be limited.
An essential part of health is eating right. Our recommended prescription for eating right is to follow either a Zone or Paleo Diet. Although there are many factors that make up good health, most people measure health by how much they weigh. What you weigh isn't necessarily a good indicator of good health, but that's the biggest yardstick we all use as a measure of both health and fitness. Plus, it's the easiest one to see when you step on the scale. The sad truth is that working out, without eating right, won't help with weight loss. Others agree. Click HERE.
If you measure weight loss by caloric expenditure, you've got to realize that working out hard or for a long time only burns a minimal amount. Thanks to the computer that comes with every Concept2 rower, you can measure your distance rowed, time, power output, and calories burned. Here's the test to demonstrate the point that hard work burns relatively few calories. Set the rower up for a 2000m row and go at it as fast as you can. At the end of the row, you should be wiped out. Check the calories burned. Note just how hard you rowed vs. how few calories you expended for that row. I think you'll be shocked at the results. Similarly, if you're a runner and think that running three miles will burn a ton of calories, you've got to understand that a three-mile run only burns about 300 calories. To burn a pound off, you'd have to repeat that 10 times!
It takes a lot more than just hard work in the gym to lose weight. You've got to eat right. Talk to us about the Zone or Paleo, or attend one of our upcoming seminars.
