#1 Your scale indicates your level of health
#2 Your daily workout ”routine” will make/keep you fit
#3 All calories are created equal.

In my last blog, I discussed why your scale weight is not the true measure of your level of health.
Today I will discuss the myth that your daily workout routine will keep you fit.

Your daily workout routine will make you/keep you fit…don’t believe it.

I meet people all the time who have been led to believe that that you can work out at moderate intensity, repeating a single stimulus, and achieve results.

This could be the casual daily walk, or a long slow run or a circuit through the same gym machines or using three-pound dumbbells in yoga class. This is the lie of every device you see marketed at 3:00am. It is the lie of routine.
Improving your fitness requires effort and some difficulty. You must run faster than before, you must lift more than before, you must do more work in less time than before. This fact follows from a fundamental principle of exercise science known as SAID or specific adaptation to imposed demands.

Stated differently, SAID says you’ll get precisely the physical adaptation your workout demands of your body — and no more. Jogging three miles per day at a pace of ten minutes per mile will result in a body capable of precisely that, three miles in thirty minutes. It will result in a body-fat percentage, muscle mass, and aerobic fitness consistent with that pace. Once that adaptation is achieved through repetition, there will be no further gains.

And so to become more fit or lose weight, you must push. You must run faster. You must lift more. You must include variance in your “routine,” finding new ways to impose demand on your body. .Above all, you must do things you don’t normally do, varying activities, rep schemes, loads, and distances to create new adaptations. Certainly that does not mean pushing and becoming injured, but it may mean pushing beyond your comfort zone, at least on some of your exercise days.

The takeaway: There is no such thing as a daily workout “routine” that works to improve fitness, strength or weight loss. If you want results, you must seek the discomfort of new demands. I have people ask me frequently for a daily workout program. To truly become more fit, lose weight or build muscle, you need a varied exercise program that places new demands on your body, at a pace and level that benefits you wherever you are at this moment. I can help find that for you.