How long do you need to work out before you start seeing results? Well, the answer to this question really depends on a person’s starting point. Whether you’ve been inactive with a poor diet for decades or whether you’ve been eating clean longterm and you’re just trying to tone up will have a huge impact on your body’s ability to lose weight. Let’s unpack this below!
Overweight = quicker to see results
For those who have had a very poor diet for years and years, if you were to make even a small change ( such as cutting out takeaway meals and replacing these with home cooked) you’re going to experience considerable benefits. You’ll notice an improvement in your energy, less digestive stress and weight loss, all within just a few weeks.
With regards to exercise, if you’ve been inactive for years at a time, you’ll see similarly great improvements if you were to start including 3 x 30 minute walks per week. This is a nice and easy work out that will see your fitness improve quickly, positively impacting (and speeding up) your weight loss.
The greater level of change to your current circumstances, the quicker you’ll see results.
You can read more about this here.
The less you’ve got to lose, the more challenging it becomes
So, for those of us already eating a 90% clean diet, who are conscious of their portions, and limit processed food, sugars, alcohol and refined carbohydrates, results won’t come nearly as quickly. Even if you were committed to a regular and intense work out up to 5 times per week. Naturally, you’d be quite frustrated if you were seeing little movement on the scales or noticeable physical results.
Some people may even resort to going to more extreme measures with their nutrition and training. However, the outcome is very rarely a positive one, as this kind of lifestyle can very often lead to long-term damage to your metabolism and your psychological health.
We actually see this quite often in our 12WBT program. We have new members sign up who may have a very low level of fitness and activity base (they’re unfit, weak, inflexible and overweight) and they haven’t been doing a lot to address that. They then start to make consistent changes and see huge improvements, especially in the first 12 weeks. I’m talking upwards of 15-20 kgs.
After these 12 weeks, however, results start to slow down. This is why we will likely suggest that they switch things up by going from a weight loss goal (following our Beginner Fitness Program geared for weight loss) to a performance goal (following our Learn to Run Program geared towards long-distance running). This change of focus and training approach often shocks the body into seeing fantastic physical improvements once again and it also changes their mindset – which has amazing long term benefits.
Mindset hacks
If you’re feeling particularly frustrated by a lack of results, then I recommend trying one or more of the following approaches:
1) Setting a performance-based goal- this might be a 5km fun run, being a part of a charity walk, learning to swim, learning to dance or planking for 1 minute.
2) Setting a mindset goal- see how you can reduce your stress levels by prioritizing more sleep, more ‘me time’ and increasing your meditation practice.
3) Developing a new skill- improving your soccer or netball skills, learning to surf or trying to beat your kids at table tennis
Interested in kickstarting your weight loss, sweating through a work out and building healthy fitness habits? Visit our fitness homepage to learn more about our 12 week fitness programs, catering from Beginner level all the way to Marathon prep!
