A few weeks ago, I was at home, sick in bed and trying to recuperate.
If you follow me on Instagram, you may know that I make a post on there every day. That’s little more than a marketing tactic.
However, on this particular day, since I wasn’t feeling so hot, I thought: Maybe I just won’t post anything today. I’m not feeling it and I’m sure no one will notice.
But I have some software on my phone that lets me take video templates and repurpose them for social media and I had been seeing some decent feedback from those.
So, at a time of day when I don’t normally post on social media, I found a video I could use, spent about 2-3 minutes tweaking it for my purposes and posted it up.
And, by all comparisons, especially in my little bubble, it went viral.
As of this writing (and it’s still going), this 5 second video has been seen over 950,000 times, it’s been liked by over 22,000 people, it’s been shared over 18,000 times and I have apparently gained over 100 new followers from it.
I’ve not paid to boost the post and there is no special hashtag or caption connected to it that would/should have made it more popular than anything else that I’ve done.
But, if we trust what the social media gurus tell us, it’s a message that resonates and, it contains a clip from a movie that a lot of people love.
Let’s break it down:
I snatched a clip from the movie The Devil Wears Prada (which I’ve only seen once) and it features Meryl Streep saying the line: “By all means move at a glacial pace, you know how that thrills me”.
When I saw the clip, it made me think of how people feel about how fast/slow the scale moves when they’re trying to lose fat.
I thought: I could totally work with this clip.
So, in the text above Meryl’s image, I posted this: When you kicked ass in all of your workouts, adhered to your food plan, got enough protein in, kept your step count up, and the scale dropped 0.2 lbs.
And apparently, a lot of people knew this feeling intimately well and it blew up.
While the numbers are indeed something I’ve been excited about seeing, I actually wanted to break down the context of that post so that you’ve got some practical takeaways from it.
Fat loss is one of those strange areas of life where the effort you put in doesn’t always equate to the results you get in return. There are ways that the body can compensate for a lack of energy coming in and there is enough user error when it comes to estimating how much we eat and, as a result, a lot of areas are left open to interpretation.
I’m going to go line by line and try to clear this up:
“When you kicked ass in all of your workouts…”: Coming from a guy who owns a gym, I am #teamexercise all the way. I want you to be the strongest, fittest version of yourself that you can be. That being said, exercise, despite how some people look at it, is not the most efficient way to achieve fat loss. For one, the average person (who isn’t being studied in a lab) has no accurate way of determining how many calories they burn in a 30-60 minute workout, for instance. Your smartwatch may tell you one thing, but it’s wrong. Your cardio equipment of choice may tell you something else, but it’s also wrong. On the flipside, many people assume that because they’re sweating a lot or that their heart rate stayed elevated that they burned a boatload of calories. The fact is, maybe they did and maybe they didn’t. And it’s not just what you do in that exercise session, it’s how much you expend over a 24 hour period. Suffice to say, if you have a really ass-kicking workout, there’s a good chance that you’re going to be tired afterwards and if you’re tired, guess what you’re not going to be doing? Moving around very much. That extra movement in a day is called NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) and it actually contributes to a considerable amount of your expenditure in a day. So, as a coach, I do want you to show up for your workouts, and I do want you to move as much as possible, but I don’t want you to overestimate how much you’re burning because we just don’t have a good way to estimate that.
“…adhered to your food plan…”: By comparison, the most efficient mover of the scale is the measure of what you’re putting/not putting into your mouth. As we in the fat loss realm like to say: adherence is everything. So, the best diet plan is the one you can stick with most consistently and that’s not just the choice of foods but the appropriate deficit for your lifestyle. Depending on how conservative or aggressive you are with the deficit you create, this reflects in what the scale will show you. A lot of things can affect the scale though. Wild fluctuations in carbohydrate consumption, sodium intake and hydration all play a role. Stress can also affect how you retain fluids. Also, you may not be removing waste efficiently from your digestive system. Any of these factors can change what the scale says and while the scale is a helpful measuring tool, it’s not without nuance.
“…got enough protein in…”: Often, when people hear that they need to increase their protein intake, they do so without dropping the amount of carbohydrates or fats they’re consuming. As result, even though the increase in protein is generally a good thing, it may also take someone into an energy surplus for the day and (wait for it), they go UP in weight. So, while I absolutely want you to take advantage of all that strength training you’re doing and fueling yourself with the appropriate amount of protein, if fat loss is your goal, you’ll have to drop some amount of carbohydrates and fats to make up the difference and still keep you in an energy deficit.
“…kept your step count up…”: While I would never want to steer someone away from the neurological and physical benefits of traditional cardiovascular exercise, one of the best ways to burn a few extra calories with the least risk of injury and the lowest barrier to entry, it’s walking. Now, you don’t have to aim for 10k steps a day (unless of course it’s an easy number for you to hit), but you can see plenty of benefit from establishing a baseline of steps you currently get and aiming to increase that number as consistently as you can. Another added benefit is that walking is a lot less likely to increase your hunger which is an important factor to consider when you’re trying to lose fat and stay adherent to your plan.
“…the scale dropped 0.2 lbs”: Herein lies the rub. You can be doing alltherightthings and the scale will barely budge (or it may even go up). The problem that a lot of folks forget is that, even when you’re checking everything off the list, the scale won’t always reflect the number. The best tip is to look at the data point over a period of weeks and see if the number is trending down. If the number remains flat, then your intake is roughly in line with what you’re expending in a day. Sometimes, people do hold steady in a weight plateau for a period of weeks and playing the waiting game is the best they can do. In other words, don’t change anything. Keep following the plan you’re on and see if other areas of the body are changing. Many people report that when the scale isn’t moving down, their body is actually shifting in composition. Maybe they notice that they’re using an extra belt loop or their pants feel looser. Keep in mind, that to lose one pound of fat, you’re trying to drop approximately 3500 calories. It’s not perfect math and it’s not a perfect process. If you truly feel stuck, try making a slight drop in intake or by trying to make a slight increase in what you’re burning. Make that effort consistent and see what changes.
Of course, it’s not always easy to spot where we’re getting stuck and that’s where having a coach alongside you can help. If you need guidance, drop me a line.
As for the original viral post, it’s wild to see how well it performed but it says a lot about a common frustration for so many people struggling to get that damn scale to play along nicely with our goals.
