In most peoples cases, a lot less jogging than you’re currently doing.  People do too much steady state cardio training for fat loss – without realising that long term, it makes people structurally weak and predisposes them to store fat!

We’re not anti jogging and we work with plenty of people who run both competitively and recreationally.  If you like running, or it’s your sport, all well and good – but in terms of losing body fat, running it’s not the most efficient way to go.

The full explanation of this goes beyond a brief Q&A section, but we’ll try and give you the ‘short’ version.

The key to fat loss is good nutrition and increased metabolic activity (exercise). A  run will burn calories and give your metabolism a nudge, for the time that you are actually jogging and for say 4-6hrs after you stop.  The heavy breathing and sweating will help with detoxification, pounding the pavement will strengthen you legs (initially) and you’ll also lose weight when you start out.  Good stuff.

Over time however, long runs break down muscle tissue (disastrous for fat loss), reduce bone density (a very real concern for women especially), and cause a spike in stress hormones, which frankly most of us could do without.  In most people jogging also compromises posture, causes musculoskeletal problems (often knee pain), ankle stiffness, calf tightness and results in imbalances between the muscles at the front and those at the back of the body.  Not ideal.

Also, think about it this way – efficiency is the enemy of fat loss.  The first time you put your pumps on and do your fifteen minutes around the block you burn say two hundred calories.  As you get ‘fitter’ or more efficient, the same jaunt around the block is less taxing and you need to expend less calories to complete it.  So, next time you have to run for say twenty minutes to hit this two hundred calorie mark.  Twenty five minutes two weeks later, half an hour the week after that, and so on (great if you are actually training to run further!).  Before you know it, you’ve trained for a marathon, your knees are killing you, and guess what?  You’re still just as disgruntled with the way you look!