Should You Track Your Exercise Too Lose Body Fat And Gain Muscle | Kbands Live 146

Tracking your exercise and food calories consumed will not help you lose body fat or gain muscle. No doubt it will be good information, which is always useful. Tracking your calories consumed and those burned through working out could be beneficial, just don’t put a lot of confidence in the numbers. I’ll explain this in more detail after you watch video. The video is a great ab, back, bicep and tricep workout that will help you gain strength, improve your muscle size and your flexibility. The video also explains why merely tracking this activity will not help you lose body fat or gain muscle. You might be surprised to learn it may even have the opposite effect. You might gain weight. Watch the video, complete the workout and continue to learn how and why to track your exercise to get the most benefit and ensure it doesn’t compromise all of your hard work.

Is There a Downside to Fitness Trackers or Counting Exercise Calories?

First, you need to understand that you can track your exercise and the calories burned using many different apps or fitness equipment. Remember that each of these are programmed using a generic set of formulas based on large volumes a data collected from lots of people. While the app developers try to make it as correct and as accurate as possible, they just can’t. You enter limited information about yourself and this is supposed to make the results even more beneficial. So, the estimated calories burned for an hour of exercise will be different depending if you are using an Apple watch, a Fitbit, a Garmin, an app on your smart phone, or the cardio equipment at the gym. The calories burned will never be the same. Yes, this is the huge downside. The numbers are just not accurate. It even becomes worse when you think these numbers are accurate and you are tracking your exercise to lose weight.

Hopefully you now understand why these numbers cannot be relied upon as 100% valid. The estimated calories burned is merely an indication. It is not fool proof and exercise trackers are not a perfect tool. If you believe the calories burned during your exercise from whatever app or device you are using it could be jeopardizing your weight loss goals. Let me explain why. You work out really hard, the app says you have burned 600-800 calories from exercise. This is in addition to the calories you consume during normal daily activities. Based on Trevor’s size he can consume 1800-2200 calories a day to maintain normal body functions. Add in another 600-800 exercise calories and you might think he can eat 2800-3200 calories every day! That is a lot of calories and he explains if he ate at that level, and he has, he never loses weight. He only gains weight. You simply cannot eat into your exercise calories. One, you will overeat. Two, they are just an estimate and should never be considered as a precise and accurate number.

Should I Ever Track My Exercise Calories?

There are many reason you might want to track your exercise calories to help you lose body fat or to gain muscle. First, if you are new to fitness you will potentially see huge gains depending on your starting point. When starting a new exercise fitness routine, you will lose water weight initially and some body fat as you reduce your calorie intake. Second, if you are trying to get in a certain number of steps or minutes of exercise each day, these devices are good for that as well. They can accurately measure how long you have exercised or how many miles you have walked. This can motivate you to keep up the changes you are making to improve your lifestyle and mobility. Third, maybe for you keeping track of these calories is a motivator. Its keeps you coming back to exercise and to your workouts so you can feel success and know you are continuing to be successful, even if the scale doesn’t always reflect this. We all know you will stall in your weight loss or muscle gain journey. It’s just how it happens. Not everyone loses every week. Tracking the amount of your exercise will be a positive reinforcement for yourself. Mentally you can think, I didn’t lose weight this week but I still met all of my exercise goals. Good for Me! Fourth, if you work out alone it can be difficult. Tracking your exercise can help keep you on track. If you work out with a partner you can use it to set up individual challenges during your workouts. Who does the most pull-ups? Who had the most steps in the previous week? You get the point. Turn your workouts into a challenge and use these apps to help support your challenges and your results.

Summary

By now you know eating reduced calories is the only way to lose body fat. Merely tracking your exercise calories will not make you lose body fat or gain muscle. Working out with resistance bands or body weight training is how you gain muscle. The fitness apps or devices provide an indication of calories burned during your exercise but you should never eat into these calories. If you do you will gain weight. You should only consume the quantity and quality of calories needed to meet your weight loss goals. There are lots of apps that will help you determine what this number should be based on your activity level, age, gender, how quickly you want to lose weight, health, etc. There is a lot a research that says you don’t really lose weight from exercise. Weight lose comes from reducing the amount of food consumed. The benefit of exercise is overall heart health, flexibility, mobility, improves overall quality of life and helps to prevent certain diseases. These are all great reasons to exercise every week even if it isn’t the big weight loss reducer we all want it to be.
Training your legs will not make your chest larger. Consistently working each muscle group, your legs or chest, will make them stronger and give you great definition. These workouts can also improve your flexibility, your heart health, your mobility and improve the overall quality of your activities. Follow Trevor and Carl on the Kbands Live Fitness site to get new workouts sent to you every week. There is no easier way to change up your fitness routine to keep it interesting and ensure you continue to make progress and obtain the gains you are working toward.