How Much Should You Train For Weight Loss?

This question is right up there with the most common questions I get as a trainer. For the purposes of the article I'm writing about weight loss, but those words could be substituted for strength, hypertrophy, performance, health or any other factor that's important to you. The question of how much you should be training for weight loss is one that can be answered quickly with the law of diminishing returns.

The Productive Phase You start off in the Productive Phase, where every input that you put in gives a productive gain in a linear like fashion. In reality for training for weight loss this looks like doing something (a gym session, a run, or a home workout) being WAY better than doing nothing, and doing a bit more is going to be WAY better that just doing the minimum (i.e. two runs a week are likely going to be better than doing one). This also applies to those individual sessions. A 10 minute workout is always going to be better than no workout at all... and a 20 minute workout will likely be even better. This is real Bang for Buck training and a great place for everyone to start. Diminishing Returns Once you've maxed out the productive phase you start to hit Diminishing Returns. This is the point where adding more no longer gives a linear productive gain. The gains are still there, but they're slower. This point will be individual and dependent on your situation, but there are some good examples in recent research to help illustrate the concept. We're often advised to shoot for 10,000 steps a day to be considered active and keep us healthy, but recent studies by Paluch et al. 2021 and Schnohr et al. 2021 both suggest that 7,000 steps a day may actually be enough. The concept in this regard is that all additional steps from 0 to around 7,000 will fall into the productive phase. Every unit of input will lead to a productive output in a largely linear fashion. Something is better than nothing, a bit more is even better still. From 7,000 to 10,000 steps there will be continued benefits for sure, but they will be slower. The returns start to diminish. This isn't bad news, as somewhere within the phase of diminishing returns will be your Optimal Training Volume, or the peak maximal total output on the illustration above... but just ask yourself are you someone who really needs optimal (professional athlete/competitor), or bang for buck (general population/health and fitness)? The message is what a lot of people will perceive as the minimum to make progress will more likely fall in this area. More isn't always better or necessary. If you're hitting 7,000 steps you're getting more of the benefits, is it worth stressing over getting another 3,000 between 9pm and 10pm? Negative Returns Once the tapering of diminishing returns slows to no further output relative to input you hit the phase of Negative Returns. This is where for every additional input you put in, you get a lower output. In fitness terms this is known as overtraining. You've started doing so much that it starts negatively affecting other parts of the process. You can no longer recover from your training. You spend too much of your time training and not enough time resting, refuelling and regenerating. You lift too much today meaning you need to spend tomorrow and the next day on the couch. You flow yourself so much that your knees flare up and they hinder your next week of training. You reduce calories so much that you become so hungry that you binge. You reduce calories so much that you don't recover and can't train as hard, reducing your activity level and hindering your weight loss goals. These are all real world examples of negative returns that I see and help people overcome on a weekly basis. More isn't always better, and more can be really frustrating when you feel like you're putting in so much effort and getting no reward. It's because of the law of diminishing returns. You got greedy, overlooked bang for buck and optimal in favour of maximal, and shot yourself in the foot. Soooo... How Much Training Should You Do? So to actually answer the question... as always it depends (I'm a strength coach after all... it's our catchphrase). It depends on a whole load of factors. Your age, fitness, job, stress, health, strength, sleep, size, etc. But... what I often see working with my clients who will all vary on those above factors is something like:

• 3-4 sessions per week

• 45-60 minutes per session

• 70-85% average intensity per session

• Active lifestyle between sessions (7,000+ steps).

It's all a very safe bet of landing somewhere between the productive phase and optimal training volume. You get near equal ratio of training and recovery days, you can maintain productive training intensities, and live a normal non-fitness/gym obsessed lifestyle and you know, do other stuff. If someone is younger, fitter, healthier and less stressed, generally you can push the top ends of those more frequently. If someone is older, less active, de-conditioned and leads a stressful life you should push the top end of those less often if at all. What I am yet to find is someone who genuinely needs to train 6-7 times a week at maximum intensity to achieve weight loss. It is wholly unnecessary and firmly falls into negative returns. So be smart. Master bang for buck first. Enjoy the progress. Don't get greedy. More isn't always better. Thanks, Ian.