Why your cardio stopped working.

Cardio is one mechanism that is often utilized for an individual to burn excess calories, such that at the end of the day, week, and month, they are in an energy deficit. An energy deficit over the month is in fact required for weight loss. With that being said, oftentimes people need to constantly increase the amount of cardio they're doing in order to continue to lose weight at the same rate as when they first begin doing cardio.

There are a multitude of other subtle nuances that contribute to the need to increase cardio because the cardio is simply not burning as much energy. These include:

Becoming more efficient at doing the same amount of cardio by adopting the most efficient form and posture.

Becoming more cardiovascularly fit such that your heart rate does not elevate as much at the same intensity

And just burning less calories because you are simply at a lower body weight.

That being said, one factor outside of the cardio itself that is reducing your energy expenditure, despite doing the same amount of cardio, or even when you INCREASE the amount of cardio, is a reduction in activity during all the other hours of the day. This activity is referred to as your non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT. Your NEAT is made up of all of the things that you do that are not intentional exercise. From fidgeting, to talking, to blinking, these are all of these things that contribute to your NEAT. For the most part your NEAT is completely unconscious, and you typically will not have much control over your unconscious movements. Therefore, we may not notice a decrease in NEAT that might cause our weight loss to stall. This may become a problem. It is estimated that your NEAT is responsible for 70% of your total daily energy expenditure. Therefore a decrease in your NEAT just might be overshadowing your additional expenditure during cardio. You may increase your cardio, but decrease the amount of activity you are doing the rest of the day, and at the end of the day you are burning the same, or even LESS calories.

One of my favorite ways to try to prevent one's NEAT from decreasing as they progress through a diet is to simply ensure they are recovering fully. This includes making sure you have the requisite nutrients, and general recovery in terms of sleep, so that their energy levels throughout the day do not decrease. It is safe to say that a decrease in subjective energy is almost certainly indicative that your NEAT is decreasing.

The other strategy I use to try and ensure that NEAT does not decrease is to keep a daily step tracker. When you do cardio, you can remove the step tracker, so it does not contribute to your daily step goal. Then, ensure that you are meeting the same step goal outside of cardio every single day. Therefore, we can combat the common issue of increasing the amount of steps we do DURING cardio, but decreasing the amount of steps we do the rest of the day.

For example, if you enjoy running for cardio, maybe you run 5,000 steps during cardio. For the rest of the day you have a goal of 10,000 steps. If you increase the time you run, and start to take 7,000 steps, ensure that you still meet your goal of 10,000 steps outside of your time spent doing cardio. While you cannot be certain this is the case, if you are able to do this you can be more confident that the additional cardio you are doing is contributing to an additional caloric expenditure by the end of the day.

In essence, it is pointless to add in cardio if it comes at the expense of your total daily energy expenditure, if your goal is to lose weight. So when you begin to stall, despite doing the same thing in the gym and the kitchen, you may want to look at your daily activity outside of the gym as a source of the problem.