Walk, Forrest, Walk
It seems that running is everyone’s first “go-to” to try and lose weight.
Certainly, very few people do it for cardiovascular health because let’s admit it, running is not exactly enjoyable.
Let’s break down what happens within the body when we try to run or do excessive cardio to help us lose weight.
The Beginning of Time
Quick history lesson.
If we look at our ancestors, they did not decide to run a 5k for the fun of it. They did interval sprints in hopes of catching a hunt so they can feed their family/tribe.
Endurance running wasn’t a thing that existed or even resulted from a hunt. They lived in food scarcity and couldn’t waste precious energy on a hunt that meant they had to keep running in order to catch it.
They listened to their bodies and understood that it wasn’t feasible or made sense to run an ungodly amount of time in search of nutrients.
Not only that, they needed those nutrients for quick bursts of energy to engage in a sprint after an animal or running from an animal that decided to pursue them instead.
The ability for them to have those quick bursts to be able to remove themselves from a dangerous situation or engage in a fight is their sympathetic response to a stressor.
That sympathetic response is our “fight or flight” response to hold on to vital nutrients like glucose and free fatty acids and use them to fuel our muscles to run away from an object or after one.
It also increased our heart rate, increased our blood pressure, allowed us to have laser-like focus, and decreased our gastric motility.
All of these systems working together as one to maximize our energy output to keep us alive for yet another day.
Once the hunt or fear was removed, our parasympathetic system kicked in to allow us to “rest and digest.”
Meaning, we could restore some of the nutrients we had lost in the hunt, repair our muscle tissues from the hypertrophic sprint that occurred, fuel our mitochondria, lower our heart rate and allow digestion to resume.
That is the state which allowed us to recover so we can do the same process again later in that day or whenever is needed.
We could not burn that candle at both ends and maintain our health. Our ancestors didn’t know this, but we survived because they listened to their bodies instead of ignoring what it was telling them.
There was never a time in their history that they needed to do cardio to help lose weight. It was a mode of survival and it was interval training at best.
They were active. They did not have metabolic or cardiovascular disease.
It was a system that worked and worked extraordinarily efficiently.
Running Does Not Make You Lose Weight
The science is out ladies and gentlemen.
Running does not let you lose weight. It makes us hold onto free fatty acids and glucose. It does not mobilize those fats because we are putting our body in a stressed state.
When there is stress, we are in a sympathetic drive and our cortisol is elevated.
Remember what happens when cortisol is elevated?
Fatty acids and glucose remain in the fat tissue to use as nutrients so we can escape a dangerous situation or capture our prey.
Much like our ancestors, our heart rate would elevate, blood pressure would rise, stomach motility would decrease, and nutrients would not be shunted to burn as fuel for fear we would lose energy and be eaten or lose our kill.
We don’t usually have to worry about being eaten today or losing our kill because we live in food abundance.
So why are we still running and thinking that it is healthy for us?
It is very hard on our joints, we sacrifice lean muscle mass to fuel our runs and we don’t typically get the cardiovascular benefits we are searching for by sustaining a perpetually elevated heart rate.
Improving the pump of the heart and the heart rate variability does far more benefit to our body than maintaining an elevated heart rate at 140 beats per minute for a half-hour to an hour.
It’s literally ludicrous.
Don’t misunderstand my statements and make them fit your prerogative.
Cardiovascular health is VITALLY important, however, running is NOT the answer we are seeking.
The Secret Recipe To Weight Loss
Spoiler alert. There is no secret recipe.
Just dedication and consistency.
It’s quite easy, actually, and there should be no misinterpretation of this information.
Let’s break it down.
We watch what goes in our mouths first.
We need to eat real food that does not have seed oils, gluten, soy, or corn.
We need to move more.
There you have it, everyone.
Plain and simple as plain and simple gets.
If we want to lose weight and focus on our cardiovascular health at the same time, we absolutely can.
You follow that ‘secret recipe’ and everything will fall into place.
If you want to be an overachiever, start walking for a few minutes per day and see the benefit that it could bring you.
We don’t always need to go balls to the wall to make a positive impact on our physiology. It knows what it has to do to survive and thrive, we just aren’t very good at listening or paying attention.
This is the benefit of living, learning, and understanding how our body works.
Walking can expose us to natural sunlight, which triggers a majestic mechanistic response where we can start synthesizing vitamin D!
Why would we try to run in a gym on a treadmill like a caged up rodent, when we can go outside and be free?
The sun isn’t bad, it’s bad when we used to put oils on our skin in hopes of getting that golden brown tan. We would literally just burn off our skin from the sun’s ultraviolet light and create a significant risk for skin cancer.
Moderate sun exposure is essential! Vitamin D is a nutrient we cannot create on our own.
Yes, we can take vitamin D, but it doesn’t break down as effectively as the built-in design our body has for getting it from the sun.
Marathon Runner’s Are The Most Unhealthy People On The Planet
Have you ever looked at a marathon runner or iron man athlete and thought to yourself, “man, I wish I had their body?”
Of course, you didn’t! That would be stupid!
They are what is called “skinny fat.”
They make look somewhat healthy on the outside because phenotypically they are skinny, but on the inside, they are surrounded by layers of visceral fat to help protect their organs from this significant, sustained stressful state.
Again, our bodies are really good at trying to keep us alive even though we do some really dumb stuff to them.
Visceral fat is the fat that surrounds our vital organs like our heart, liver, kidneys. If there is fat on the organs themselves, they limit how impactful their functionality is and they suffer consequences.
Many, not all, marathon runners have high body fat percentages (in the 30’s) and very low lean muscle mass.
This is because they manipulate their body to store energy as fuel to satiate their need to run to infinity.
This is also the reason why many marathon runners have high blood pressure, suffer from massive heart attacks and strokes at an early age, and create an early demise for themselves all in the hopes of being able to run for miles on end.
For what and why?!?!
Our bodies were not meant to run long distances. We know that visceral fat is a high predictor of mortality.
Yet we continue to think running is good for our cardiovascular health and helps us lose unwanted belly fat.
We have to start at the source.
Stop putting crappy foods in your mouth and expecting to figure out an alternative to escape your poor decisions.
We cannot alter how our body’s physiology works at the foundation. We have to work with it instead of against it.
Eat more real foods and do some functional activity that you find rewarding and enjoyable.
I mean this is your life, why can’t we enjoy the ride?
Be strong. Be brave.
