Whether it’s losing weight for your New Year’s resolutions or trying to firm up and get in shape for summer beach season, you want to see quick fitness results.
But how quickly can you honestly expect to see your dieting and exercising pay off? And, more importantly, how quick is actually healthy?
The Downside of Fast Results
People who are trying to lose weight would love to drop pounds — especially fat — quickly and easily. Of course, that’s not how weight loss typically works. Instead, everything from your hormones to your neurologic system and signals adapt to every little change in your diet and exercise routine.
And, when you change things too drastically, like when you cut your daily food intake from 2,500 to 1,200 calories per day or try to tackle an hour-long boot camp class on the first day of your gym membership, your body’s adaptations do more harm than good, says Grant Weeditz, a certified strength and conditioning specialist at Anatomy at 1220 in Miami.
Your body perceives that food is in short supply, you’re starving and, in an effort to spare calories, it starts burning protein (aka muscles) for energy. “This will shut down the fat-burning metabolic processes of the body and start the downward spiral of metabolic damage,” Weeditz says. “The more you cut calories, the more you have to continually cut to see results. Avoid this situation like the plague.”
What’s more, this reduction in resting metabolic rate (the number of calories you burn just to live) means that fast weight loss generally isn’t maintained for long and instead leads to rebound weight gain, explains Marie Spano, an Atlanta-based board-certified sports dietitian and registered dietitian.
For example, in one University of California–Los Angeles review, about two-thirds of dieters who successfully lost weight ended up gaining back everything they lost — and then some — within four to five years.
On the fitness and muscle side of things, diets that are too low in calories decrease your body’s ability to synthesize new, metabolically active muscle, largely nullifying your workout efforts, Spano says. They also reduce your overall energy levels to make your workouts feel harder.
Also, it’s important to remember that your muscles don’t get stronger or faster during your workouts. You get fitter in the hours and days in between your gym sessions as your muscles repair and adapt to any given workout, Weeditz says. If you work out for hours every day — especially if you were working out for zero hours last week — or train the same muscles during back-to-back days, you aren’t going to give your body the time to appropriately recover. The result: You aren’t going to see the fitness results you want. And there’s nothing more frustrating than working hard in the gym and not reaping the gains you expected.
[READ: Hula Hoop: Is It Good Exercise?]
The Right Rate of Fitness
While, generally, most people should not aim to lose more than 2 pounds per week in order to maintain lean muscle, people do vary in how fast they can safely lose weight, according to Weeditz. And, fortunately for those who haven’t set foot in the gym since last spring, the further your body is from your healthy goal, the faster you’ll initially make progress toward it, he says.
What’s more, when starting a healthy eating and exercise routine, some people can notice benefits in their physique even before the first pound drops, according to Spano. That’s because reducing your intake of processed foods, excess sodium and refined carbs (remember, whole carbs are still good for weight loss) can lead to a noticeable reduction in bloating within a day or two, she says.
Any visual or weight changes might not jive with the full benefits going on in your body. “For an overweight individual seeking to lose a substantial amount of fat and gain muscle, eight weeks of training may only show a change in upper arm size,” Weeditz says. “However, local fat loss around the area may actually be significant, but muscle increase in the same area minimizes the visual size reduction.” Meanwhile, for someone who started an eight-week program with only 10 or 20 pounds of weight to lose, any muscle gain will likely show up as definition rather than bulk, since it is hidden under less fat tissue. In the long term, since a pound of muscle takes up much less space than a pound of fat, people who gain substantial muscle while losing fat actually reduce their body size.
For that reason, it can be beneficial to gauge not only weight, or even size, but also body-fat percentage in order to get a more realistic view of the changes occurring in your body. Many scales now measure body-fat percentages in addition to weight. And improvements in your cardiovascular endurance and strength will always be the most accurate marker that you are, in fact, becoming healthier than you were last week or month.
[SEE: 5 Tips for Warming Up Before a Workout.]
Eating for Fitness Results
Your body needs fuel — as in food — to have enough energy to exercise and boost fitness, says Nancy Clark, a registered dietitian and sports nutritionist with a private practice in the Boston area and author of “Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook.”
“Most of the people I work with come to me saying, ‘I’m low on energy. I’m tired all the time,'” Clark says. “If they just change their eating patterns, they see results immediately.” Taking in 200 to 300 calories before a workout helps people perform better, she says, compared with exercising on empty.
If you’re getting up and running before work, have a banana or piece of toast with peanut butter first, Clark suggests, to get some gas in your tank. Also, hydrate with water or coffee — some type of fluid. Then, go for your run.
“Unless you have a hefty dinner and nighttime snacks, eating breakfast before a morning workout will boost your blood glucose, which can drop overnight,” she says. “Given the brain (which controls your muscles) relies on blood glucose for fuel, you’ll have more pep in your step.”
Refueling is important too, Clark says. “If you run in the morning, you’ll probably be hungry by 10 or 11 o’clock. Most people try to hold off until lunch. But hunger is simply a request for fuel.” So have an early lunch, she suggests, followed by a second lunch (she prefers not to use “snack”) in the afternoon, like trail mix or a peanut butter and honey sandwich. “The purpose of that second lunch is to curb your appetite so you’re not starving at night and you don’t get too hungry.”
If you’re looking for six-pack abs, first, be realistic about your genetic makeup and family history, Clark says. As far as eating, her advice is similar: “Fuel by day, eat a little less by night, go to the gym, build muscle and push yourself away from the dinner table.”
If losing weight is the result you’re seeking, Clark suggests following an active lifestyle and chipping away by dropping a half-pound a week or so. “You can do that without being miserable, without being denied or deprived,” she says. “It’s sustainable.”
Gauging results by the scale is not really the best way, according to Clark. “The scale weighs too many things,” she says. “It weighs water weight. It doesn’t distinguish between muscle weight and fat weight. It measures constipation and it measures diarrhea. It measures water shifts.”
Ideally, Clark says, instead of people relying on the scale, “The goal is to be fit and healthy, and at peace with food and at peace with their body — and there’s not a number on the scale that’s associated with.”
[SEE: 8 High-Protein Breakfasts That Keep You Full.]
How to Accelerate Your Results the Safe Way
Follow these seven approaches for fast fitness results that are safe and effective — and last.
1. Increase your workout intensity and protein intake.Research published in 2016 in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows that a combination of high-intensity exercise and increased protein consumption allows people to lose more fat and build more muscle while cutting calories. “The lower your calorie consumption, the higher total protein must be to decrease muscle mass losses during weight loss,” Spano says.
2. Eat to fuel your body. Calorie needs vary greatly between people and, while caloric deficits (burning more calories than you consume) lead to weight loss, too great of deficits can lead to fat retention. Meanwhile, a caloric surplus (consuming more calories than you burn) is ideal for muscle building, Spano says.
So instead of getting hung up on calorie math, focus on food as fuel. Listening to your hunger cues and filling up on whole, minimally processed foods will help you consume more filling fiber, prevent excess insulin secretion and fat storage, and help you reach both your fat-loss and muscle-gain goals.
3. Prioritize strength training over traditional steady-state cardio. Strength workouts can increase your caloric burn, even at rest, for up to 72 hours after you leave the gym, according to research published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology. Plus, it builds metabolism-revving, performance-driving muscle.
4. Make time for recovery. Give yourself at least one full rest day per week and don’t intensely train the same muscle group twice within a three-day period, Weeditz recommends. Mix up your workouts and their intensity to allow your body to recover. It’s normal to feel some soreness 24 to 48 hours after your workouts, especially in the beginning, but you shouldn’t feel debilitated or like you can’t walk, he says.
5. Switch things up after six to 12 weeks. To keep your body constantly adapting and prevent plateaus, it’s important to vary your workout every six to 12 weeks, Weeditz says. That could mean changing up your rep-set scheme, trying a new swim stroke or taking a spin class a couple times per week. Otherwise, your body could get so well-adapted to your workout of choice that it no longer sees the need to improve.
6. Consider using fitness apps. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted the closing of many gyms, yoga studios and workout facilities. While some states are allowing the reopening of some athletic facilities, many remain closed. If your favorite gym or yoga studio is shut down, you might consider using a fitness app, Weeditz suggests. Because many people are working from home and not commuting to their office, they may have more time to get fit, “but physical space and exercise options may be limited,” he says.
Fitness apps that allow you to work out at home include:
— Peloton Digital.
— Apple Fitness+.
— Beachbody On Demand.
These and other platforms provide “new and interesting workouts daily,” Weeditz says. Fitness apps offer a variety of workouts from 10 to 60 minutes in length.
Types of workouts available on fitness apps include:
— Strength training.
— Cardio.
— Yoga.
— Pilates.
7. Don’t be alarmed if your weight-loss results haven’t been what you expected since the pandemic began. If your results have slowed down this past year, don’t panic, Spano advises. “Between lockdowns, canceled classes and limited gym equipment, we’ve been forced to exercise on our own more,” she says. “And many people don’t train as hard on their own as they do with a workout buddy or trainer. Training among others motivates us while personal trainers push us to work harder in class and get those last few reps in. Also, during the pandemic, there has been an increase in sleep disturbances, stress and stress eating.”
Spano notes that several surveys have shown that many Americans have gained unwanted weight since the pandemic began. For example, 42% of adults reported gaining more weight than they intended since the start of the pandemic, according to a survey that’s part of the American Psychological Association’s “Stress in America: One Year Later, A New Wave of Pandemic Health Concerns” report.
“So if the scale didn’t budge or even went in the wrong direction, be easy on yourself,” Spano says. She advises that people remember the many other benefits of exercise, which include:
— Better focus.
— Improved strength.
— Better heart health.
“For faster results moving forward, hire a strength coach or personal trainer and dietitian to keep you on track,” Spano says.
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Update 12/30/21: This story was previously published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.
