High intensity interval training (HIIT) cardio is ineffective for fat loss. This form of training is meant for elite athletes who already have an incredible aerobic fitness base and need to work on anaerobic and explosive fitness. The fitness industry picked it up and marketed it to the larger fitness community as a way to burn more calories in less time and with less muscle loss through excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), the energy-consuming process the body goes through after any high-intensity activity. This sounds very good--too good to be true. What they don't tell you is the EPOC effect is very small; you can add maybe 15% of the calories you burned through your entire cardio session if you want to be generous. This might be substantial for the elite athlete who burns thousands of calories every session and trains every day, but you fat and skinnyfat incels might only burn around 150 in a 20-minute HIIT cardio session where you're unable to get to the intensity or lengths of time you need to get the full benefits of HIIT because your aerobic fitness is shit, and you may only be doing them three times a week. Also, as a high-intensity activity, HIIT cardio is a glucose-dominant exercise, meaning that if you're in a glycogen-depleted state--very likely if you're dieting, especially with low carb--you are actually more likely to burn muscle as your body breaks down muscle protein to fuel the activity. The more time-consuming and less exciting low-intensity steady-state (LISS) cardio is the time-tested and lab-tested fat-burning exercise type laymen and professionals alike have used for decades to lose body fat. This means walking, running, biking, swimming, et cetera. Do those instead.- Calorie counts on nutrition labels have a 20% margin of error. Usually underestimating rather than overestimating. For example, a 400 calorie meal may actually have up to 480 calories. Assuming you eat 4 of these meals a day, you may think you're eating 1600 calories a day when you may actually be eating over 1900. If you've been stuck at a certain weight despite measuring and portioning everything perfectly, this may be one reason why, perhaps even the main one. Don't be afraid to cut more calories from your meal plan if you need to, since chances are you're eating more than you think you are anyway.
- Low-carb and ketogenic diets are not more effective than moderate-carb or high-carb diets for fat loss. Your body is always burning a mix of glucose and fat for fuel. Obviously, when you eat more fat, it will burn more fat, but this does not necessarily mean body fat. Adipose tissue loss is purely an effect of having a negative energy balance that your body makes up for with stored energy i.e. body fat. No specific macronutrient ratio is necessarily better or worse for weight loss. The body prefers glucose for high-intensity exercises like weightlifting and high-intensity cardio, so if you do either or both of those things, low-carb and keto diets are sub-optimal.
- Being stuck at a certain scale weight during a diet is normal. The body has a tendency to store water during a diet. As you are technically putting your body through a controlled starvation period, your body will store water in case water becomes scarce. This means you may be stuck at the same weight for weeks even if your diet is effective and you are truly losing body fat. You want to be measuring your waistline regularly, as this will be an even more reliable way to tell if you're losing fat than stepping on the scale. If you're stuck at a certain weight, but your waistline is shrinking, you can be certain that you are losing fat, and the number on the scale will drop once your body decides it doesn't want to store a bunch of water anymore. If your waistline isn't shrinking, you need to do more fork putdowns.
- You are smaller beneath your fat than you think you are. This especially applies to skinnyfats who think their fat loss isn't working because weight loss isn't changing their body shape. (I had one person PM me about this.) You have subcutaneous and intramuscular fat in your arms and legs that contribute to their overall size. Because of this, it's completely normal for your arms and legs to shrink along with your midsection as you diet. It's normal to stay roughly the same shape as you lose weight, especially if you're very unmuscular, which you are if you don't lift weights or have been doing so for less than a year. The most drastic changes in shape and definition don't come until you get fairly lean--under 15% body fat--especially if you're weak.
