I know that cardio is just a tool to burn calories ( I know it also has health benefits but I’m mainly talking weight loss ) but I am really curious if others feel better ( physically & mentally ) when eating more calories and then doing cardio vs just eating less calories in general?
For example: At 1700 calories I feel very hungry and weak but if I eat 1900-2000 calories and then do 2-300 calories of cardio everyday, I feel much better.
Anyone else experience this?
You are experiencing what Dr. John Berardi deemed as “g-flux”
Put simply: there’s more to food than just calories. Assuming you are picking good food choices, you are providing your body with many awesome nutrients (vitamins, minerals, fatty acids like Omega 3s, saturated fats and cholesterol to promote testosterone production, carbs that can reduce cortisol, etc).
If we just do blanket caloric restriction and aren’t strategic in our approach, we simply consume less of all these good things.
If we ramp up activity, we can consume more calories in total and, with that, more food, and with THAT, more nutrients, while still having the same net caloric balance compared to if we ate less food with less activity.
Sounds like you know what to do, then.
Do the one thats easier to comply with.
Great discussion topic. We added a picture so that we can post it to Twitter and get more people to check out the conversation.
Weights for building / maintaining LBM. Cardio for heart health. DIET is the primary tool for fat loss.
Yes, but cardio is also a tool to leverage for burning more calories without sacrificing food.
Agree, but making the point that diet is my primary modality for fat loss. Not against cardio, but cardio in excess makes inroads to recovery and could lead to overuse injury. In my own experience, NEAT in the form of 10K + steps a day is preferable and more conducive to fat loss and maintaining LBM while dieting.
I also know plenty of people who out eat their cardio and wonder why they’re still fat.
It’s one of those forehead-smacking ideas that seems blindingly obvious once it’s explained.
Yeah, but if you want some real fun, play around with the duality of that with fasting and autophagy. Which is actually kinda the direction Marty Gallagher went in Purposeful Primitive
Goddammit, I have work to do and you’re sending me down a really interesting rabbit hole.
Edit: I just ordered the book to read this weekend.
Oh my goodness you’re in for a delight! That book is such an incredible value. Marty’s writing style can get a little insufferable at times, but he has the bona fides to be able to get away with it. I think you’ll appreciate his “My Dinner with Mongo” article in particular with your culinary background.
But yeah, Dr. Robert Kiltz proposed an idea that eating was the most destructive thing we do, and that one food can undo the harm that the digestive process does to us, which correlated with this notion of fasting regularly and then feasting when the meal time came. It’s fascinating. We also saw Brad Kearns and Mark Sisson create the book “2 Meals a Day” as a simple approach to achieve a similar end. There’s an interesting dynamic out there between frequent eating as a means to take in a steady stream of nutrients compared to infrequent eating as a means to allow the guts a chance to rest and heal and reduce frequency of insulin spikes.
And then you had J.M. Blakely, who figured he had the whole “blood sugar spike” thing figured out by eating a Hershey’s bar every 2 hours. Just keep it ALWAYS elevated and then there’s no crash! Less chocolatey but still delightfully insane is Jon Andersen’s Deep Water method which also encouraged very frequent small meals, and if one experienced hunger, the solution was always to just add ANOTHER meal.
Is that what it’s from? I never knew what that reference meant.
When I went to his gym in Sausalito he was always eating something. It was impressive.
Anyway, thank you for the recommendation, I’m looking forward to reading it.
Is that what it’s from? I never knew what that reference meant.
I truthfully didn’t know that it was a thing people said: I’d only ever heard it from the book.
And Jon’s method absolutely works for him. For me, I’ve found that frequent eating just makes me…eat even more frequently. And then the rest of the time, I’m on the toilet, haha. But Jon definitely needs to get tested for Kryptonian DNA.
I noticed the same—eating slightly more and adding cardio makes me feel stronger and more energized than just cutting calories, plus it keeps hunger manageable. Using tools like BetterMe Pilates Essentials can complement this approach, helping with energy, mood, and overall fitness while supporting a calorie-conscious plan.
I’ve always felt there’s a right balance. There’s certainly extremes on both ends - I’ve done enough conditioning that I’m burnt out no matter what I’m eating. Certainly, as has been the theme of this thread, I’ve been a total couch potato at points and had to so undereat I felt awful.
