What’s your workout really worth?

From the feedback I received on the last post, it seems that most people intuitively know that diet is king when it comes to weight control.  We can debate the mechanisms until we’re blue in the face, but there is little doubt that you cannot out-exercise a bad diet…unless of course you’re an 18 year old male with a still-flawless metabolism.

But some folks have asked how this could be?  After all, the commercials show men and women with perfect bodies working out and then immediately enjoying a Mich Ultra.  As it turns out, the marketing team at InBev got it right for once.  If you do a solid 1 hour cardio workout you have earned yourself a Mich Ultra worth about 100 calories of mildly hoppy tasting water!  Congratulations!  But drink two of those and you’re only breaking even.  Reach for a third—or a fully leaded craft beer—and you might as well have just skipped the workout, gone for a long walk, and enjoyed similar a calorie burn without the compensatory hunger response from vigorous exercise.

Those of you who use a FitBit or other activity tracker (like me) probably know what I’m about to explain here.  Here are some screenshots from recent workouts I tracked using the FitBit Blaze.

Both workouts were just about an hour in duration.  Because the Blaze can monitor heart rate in real time, it provides some useful data shown on the graph (as discussed in an earlier post, the HR data from Fitbit is not unassailable, but its pretty decent).  The average HR achieved with spinning was significantly higher than it was for “workout,” even though the Peak HR was pretty similar.  The most obvious difference?  I burned about 200 more calories in 1 hour of spinning than I did in a 1 hour “workout.”

So what was the mystery workout?  20 minutes lifting weights, 20 minutes stretching/rehabbing my knee, and about 15 minutes in the sauna.  In other words, about 20 minutes of what most people consider working out and zero “cardio” training.  But my HR got up there!  As you can see in the early part of the graph, the 3 heavy sets I did really stand out and I even hit a peak HR during one of those maximal periods of exertion.  My HR cooled off substantially as I did some stretching and rehab exercise before ramping up again slowly as I sat there doing nothing in the dry sauna.  It’s notable how just sitting in the sauna replicates in many ways a mild “cardio” workout.  In some upcoming posts we’ll dive into why sauna bathing may be very beneficial for your health and more than just an obscure Scandanavian hobby.

Now, I love a good spin class or OCR as much as the next guy, but the point is that exercise shouldn’t be seen as you primary tool for weight loss.  It has a multitude of benefits–from stress relief to building muscle, endurance, and coordination–but weight loss really isn’t the primary outcome, despite what conventional wisdom tells you.  So what’s the moral of the story?  Exercise has many benefits, but don’t focus on the number of calories burned as your primary goal.  If you do, you’ll quickly be disappointed by how fast you can offset your gains in the kitchen.  Furthermore, do not underestimate the value of resistance training, especially if you’re over age 65.  Apart from simply preventing sarcopenia (muscle loss) and promoting skeletal health, resistance training has even been shown to effect insulin sensitivity and have anti-cancer effects through the action of myokines, signaling molecules released from muscle cells during exercise.

At the end of the day–yes–an hour of cardio burns more calories than an hour lifting weights, stretching, and hanging out in the sauna.  But not more than 2 Mich Ultra’s worth!

~Brendan