Ep. 96 Overhyped Fat Loss Hacks: What People Get Wrong

In this episode of the Fit for Hiking podcast, I’m calling out the most overhyped fat loss hacks that just don’t deliver. From extreme calorie deficits to gimmicky supplements and trendy cleanses, I break down eight things that steal your time, energy, and results. If you’re stuck in a frustrating cycle of losing and regaining the same weight, this one’s for you. Let’s clear the clutter and focus on what actually works—sustainable strategies that support long-term fat loss and a healthy, active life. Ready to ditch the noise? Let’s get into it.

For next level fat loss strategies, hormone/gut health help, serious performance goals and unparalleled support, apply for Mountain Metabolic coaching. Learn more HERE.

For more free wellness resources, hiking/travel guides, and other blog posts, check out my website HERE. 

| Colorado Hiking + Fitness| Ponytail on a Trail | United States Welcome to Ponytail on a Trail: Your guide to all things hiking and fitness! Get hiking tips, adventure ideas and learn about the top trails in Colorado! My goal is to help give you the tools and the confidence to explore the world around you! www.ponytailonatrail.com

What is Fit for Hiking?

Where fitness and outdoors meet. In this space we chat all things hiking, exercise, wellness, adventure, motherhood, and metabolic health from a female perspective! Get ready to learn + be inspired to live your fullest, most adventurous life!

Overhyped Fat Loss Hacks: What People Get Wrong
Hi, my name is Brady and I'm a longtime fitness professional and Midwest girl turned mountain living hiking addict. And combining my knowledge of fitness and passion for hiking, I've helped hundreds of women get lean and strong for the trails. Think of this as your one stop shop for both education and inspiration on all things female wellness, trail talk and adventure. Hiking, female metabolism, motherhood, nutrition, travel and fitness are all topics you'll hear discussed here. If you are outdoorsy and active, looking to level up your health, unlock your potential, and become inspired to live your most vibrant life, you're in the right place. You're listening to the fit for hiking podcast. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the fit for Hiking podcast. This is your host, Brady, and today we're going to have just kind of a quick and dirty episode here. Going over overhyped fat loss hacks. So kind of the things that people tend to gravitate towards that really don't move the needle in an effective way for fat loss. But like they get all this attention maybe on social media or they're very, um, trendy things that are just in general overrated for our fat loss efforts. And honestly, if we put tons of time and energy into these things, we're going to just feel frustrated. We're going to get stuck really quickly, or we're going to do the thing where we kind of yo yo where it's like, okay, yeah, maybe you do lose like 5 to £10 really fast, but then what's the next step? What's the exit strategy? We have no long term plan for success. So then we just kind of gain the weight back. And it's a repeat cycle, which is extremely frustrating when you go through all this effort to lose 5 to £10. That's a lot of work. And when you then turn around and just gain it back and then some, because you didn't go about things the right way, that can be extremely discouraging and frustrating. So let's go over what these most overhyped fat loss things are, um, so that we can just sift through the crap that's out there and you kind of have an idea of what not to focus on, because it can be really overwhelming, honestly, when you're on social media and it's like. Don't eat eggs. Don't eat oatmeal. Don't do this. Drink this in the first thing in the morning and you'll have a super fast metabolism. Make sure you don't do this though, and a lot of that stuff is just like fearmongering and marketing and extremely unhelpful. So let's sift through it. So there's a number of things that people do focus on when they're trying to lose fat, um, that are overrated. So let's go over what these are and why they just don't provide that much of a benefit. So we're going to go over eight of these today. The first one is extreme calorie deficit. So anytime we're doing something to an extreme yes you'll probably see fast results. And you'll probably feel like super motivated and like, wow, I'm in the zone. I'm doing it. Maybe you're following some sort of protocol or a cleanse or whatever trendy diet. Um, but anytime we we fall into an extreme calorie deficit, whether we know we're in one or not. So this could be intentional. Like maybe you're tracking and you're like, eating a thousand calories a day on purpose. Or maybe you're just following like a certain diet plan, like Whole30 or. A certain juice cleanse or cutting out something, and you end up in an extremely low calorie deficit. When we go to hard with calorie restriction, this can lead to a couple different things. One, you're probably not going to be able to stick with it for very long because your body's natural hunger instincts are going to kick in, so you're going to get really hungry. So maybe you sustain this for like five days and then the weekend hits, and then you go out to eat and you're like, oh my gosh, this all smells so good. And you just go crazy. Now you've probably kind of undone quite a bit of that deficit. Um, if you just like, binge all weekend and go nuts. So it's not sustainable in that way because it leads to the cyclical kind of binging and then, um, dieting type of mentality, which is a really vicious cycle that you do not want to get into. Which is why I really don't recommend going super, super low calorie for any long amount of time at all. Um, or really at all. You don't need to go crazy low calorie in order to lose weight, okay? You can do, um, a calorie deficit in a sustainable manner that will serve your goal of fat loss. But when we take things to the extreme, it tends to backfire. So that's one way it can backfire. It can also lead to muscle loss. So your equal parts fat loss and muscle loss. So you're not really getting that body composition that you want because you're losing a lot of what gives you that toned appearance. And it can also lead to some metabolic adaptation, which is where basically your metabolism catches on to what's happening. It understands that you're now receiving less nutrients than you need, and it's going to adapt to that. So it's going to down regulate to keep you alive so that you're no longer needing as many calories to function. And when we do this, over time we get a very adapted metabolism. And that is not a good thing, because we want to have a very high metabolic function that is flexible and is able to withstand lots of calories. When we diet and under eat for long periods of time, our metabolism is no longer flexible to that. So now, if you were to go have a 2500 calorie day, but your body's used to 1000 calories a day. That's going to be create a lot more likelihood of fat gain, because now your body perceives any amount of extra calories as a big surplus, which leads to fat gain. So it's not going to give you the results that you want long term. And it's also going to put you in a crappy spot to maintain any sort of loss, or just have a quality of life where you're not obsessing over calories constantly and like, oh my gosh, I can't go on vacation, I can't go out to eat, I can't do anything where I can't control things perfectly. Because if I do have a day where I go a couple hundred calories over, I'm more likely to gain weight. That's a really crappy place to be. Trust me, it is not fun. Um, so avoid the extreme calorie deficits if you want to be able to actually maintain these results long term, feel good doing it, and not crash your metabolism in the process. Number two is eliminating entire food groups. I feel like this is such a popular one because it's something that's kind of easy where it's like, oh, I'll just cut out. Sugar. I'll just cut out carbs. I'll cut out fat, whatever it is. Right? We've heard all of these diets, and they're always, like, labeled something cute or fancy so that they draw people in very marketable. Um, however, this is not necessary. We don't need to eliminate carbs or fats or sugar or anything from our diet. Um, because what are the odds that you can actually do that long term? It's not typically sustainable. So then when you go back to eating sugar or carbs or whatever it is, why would you expect that you wouldn't just gain that weight back if you haven't actually done anything that you can continue with in any sustainable fashion? Um, it's also just from a scientific standpoint, it's not necessary. We need to create an overall calorie deficit. So that doesn't matter if you're doing that while eating all of the different macronutrients or not. You could technically lose weight eating all fast food or eating tons of sugar. Is that ideal for your health and how you're going to feel? No, but you can do it. Studies have been shown where people successfully lose weight eating McDonald's for every single meal of the day. But they have created a sustainable calorie deficit in the process, so they've lost the weight. Even though it's extremely high fat, not healthy. Um, you know, it's not necessarily ideal for health metrics, but from a weight loss standpoint, it can be done okay. So eliminating entire food groups is really quite pointless. Um, and it's not going to set you up for a healthy relationship with food you have to look at. Not just right now, not just one month from now, but where do you want to be ten years from now? Do you want to still be trying to eat zero carbs for fear of gaining weight back? Because I know I don't want to live that way? Okay. So I think sometimes we're very short sighted with our fat loss, and I've totally been there, done that. It's really easy to get caught up in like the quick fixes, but where do you want to be one year from now or even six months from now? Do you want to have to avoid all carbs or all sugar, or never have anything that you enjoy in that realm ever again, because you didn't learn how to do this in a balanced. Is very discouraging and exhausting on your body over time, right? It's not something that you can keep up forever. What if you then throw in like a big life change, or having a kiddo or a job change that's now extremely time sensitive? Um, you're not going to be able to keep that up. So we want to think about the amount of bang we can get for our buck when it comes to how much time we're spending and the benefits that it provides. And when you look at the research and the science here. Strength training really does win out. And I'm not saying that cardio is totally useless. I really believe in a really great blend of the two, um, for not only physical health, but your heart health, your mental health, your performance in life. Like just being able to go for a long hike or go for a jog, or go for a long walk without feeling winded. It's beneficial to incorporate some into your life, but don't do it with the goal of weight loss. Cardio for weight loss is not going to be the most effective strategy. Another reason why cardio for weight loss is not it is because when you think about how many calories you're actually burning, and this applies to really any form of workout. The amount that you're going to burn is probably way less than what the calculators are going to tell you, than what the machine is going to tell you, than what your Apple Watch tells you. Um, and it can't be that exact because it doesn't know everything that's going on with you metabolically and physiologically. Okay. So that's just kind of a guess. Right. So I would say probably estimate that you're burning less calories than what these devices are telling you. And then you look at how easy it is to then go and eat 500 calories, 1000 calories. It adds up so fast. So when we work ourselves up in this, uh, from like an appetite standpoint, we get super hungry from doing all this cardio, then we're more likely to say, oh, I've earned this. I got, you know, I burned 500 calories on the StairMaster earlier, so I'm going to have a cheat meal. Well, then we completely negate the deficit that we might have created from the cardio. But it's like this mental thing where we feel like we've earned it. We feel like we've done so much work that we deserve a treat. Um, and so it just kind of puts us in this vicious cycle of not really making progress. So I would say, if you're someone who has been working out really consistently and, um, you're not seeing the results that you want, you might be falling into this camp of like kind of overeating for what you're doing with your workouts or just relying too heavily on calorie burn and then eating that back and maybe not realizing it. Number four supplements and fat burners. There's just such a big push with this industry, um, that these things are going to just magically melt fat off your body. Um, they might give you a very slight boost, and some supplements can be helpful, right? Like, if we're looking at medical grade, really good quality, um, supplements that meet the needs that you actually have or are helping out with deficiencies that you have. Great. But if you're just winging it and taking these, like, random fat loss supplements that are just chock full of fillers and they aren't actually good quality at all, they haven't been tested. Um, in a medical setting. And really, they're just kind of like placebo effect and have no research to back them. Then we're not really doing anything helpful. These are not going to be the things that you should focus on. You can maybe add that on once you've nailed the basics of fat loss. But I would not focus on this. This is such a minor thing, and if this is all that you're going to do is just take some like random pills and hope for the best. You're not going to see the results that you want to see. Similarly, number five is relying on a detox or a cleanse type of diet. So these types of things typically promise you quick results. But they're again, not very sustainable because they're short term and they are typically really depriving your body of nutrients and not super helpful. Most of them are done in a way that is not even like scientifically proven to be helpful, not actually doing anything for your liver or kidneys. Um, so I would just really be skeptical when you see these things that promise that you're going to detox your body, that you're going to cleanse your body, and then as a result, woosh, you just lose £20. Um, that's probably just super gimmicky as far as a marketing standpoint. And they're kind of playing to people's insecurities of wanting fast results. And oh, that sounds easier than like changing my diet long term and working out. So I'll just do that. Um, so anything that sounds way too good to be true typically is, especially if it's not really requiring you to work very hard because there really is no quick fix when it comes to changing our relationship with food, changing our mindset, and and seeing body composition changes. It does require sacrifice and work and have it change on your end. Um, so I would not easily get swayed by these things that just sound so good. Um, I will say there are really high quality methods for doing. Actually, um, scientifically studied liver cleanses and things like that for people who really need that. However, just like a thing where you're buying some juices or some crappy supplements and being told that you're going to cleanse your body, I would be very skeptical. Okay. So make sure that you are doing a ton of research before just buying into some of these things to make sure that they are actually legitimate. And if they don't require you to do any lifestyle change other than just like drinking certain things or taking certain pills or cutting out certain foods, then I would, uh, not go that route. Number six is focusing on spot reduction. So this basically means, um, trying to focus on one particular area of your body where you want to lose fat. So maybe you feel like you always carry weight in your arms or your belly. So you're like, okay, I'm just going to follow a plan where I'm just blasting my abs and trying to get rid of my belly fat there. Unfortunately. This idea that you can lose fat from a specific area from your body by doing targeted exercises is a myth. So this is not something that you can actually do because you don't just get to say, okay, I'm doing a ton of crunches and sit ups and planks. So okay, body, can you pull fat from my abs now while you are doing great work to build core strength and build muscle there, it's not going to magically melt fat off of your abdomen. Okay, we really have to look at this in the big picture where you need to lose overall body fat. And the biggest, uh, indicator of where you're going to lose that fat first is actually your genetics. Um, so it's not going to be something where you can pick and choose based on the exercises that you're doing. I really recommend full body workouts and working your entire body for the strength benefits. And so that you feel strong and have muscle tone on your arms, your legs, your booty, your abs everywhere. Um, however, just picking one area and trying to blast fat off of it is not going to work. So you have to make sure that you are using your exercises to shape and sculpt your body, to build strength, to build stamina towards whatever particular goal you have. But use your nutrition and lifestyle as far as stress management and walking throughout the day, and how much you're eating and the food quality that you're taking in to actually lose fat off of your body. Okay, that is how it is done. Is losing overall body fat through creating a sustainable calorie deficit. And, um, and that's going to really ultimately determine how much weight you lose, how much fat you lose. And your genetics are going to be the biggest thing that determines where that comes off of first. So you might be someone who loses weight off of your belly really fast, or maybe you lose weight off of your face really fast or your arms. It's going to be different for everybody. And that really is unfortunately very much out of our control. All right. Number seven. Fast weight loss with no long game in mind. So again, kind of similar to what we talked about with the really intense calorie deficit or eliminating food groups. When we focus just on the rapid fat loss result, then we're often going to kind of self-sabotage in that we're losing muscle. We might be creating nutritional deficiencies, and we're much more likely to have rebound weight gain when we do this really, really fast with no end game, no exit strategy. If you don't know how you're going to transition out of what you're doing into something that's sustainable, then it's probably not a good plan. Okay. So we really need to think long term here at least several months in advance. If you're doing something that's kind of extreme, what is your plan to move away from that and not just gain all the way back? And this is where working with a coach or having somebody who can actually walk you through what this should look like in a sustainable manner is so beneficial because yes, you might have to invest in something for, you know, 3 to 6 months, maybe even longer, maybe a year. But would you rather do that or spend the next five years doing the exact same stuff that lands you in the exact same spot? Not worth it, in my opinion, to just stay stuck. And I've had to come to grips with that in many areas of my life my health, uh, weight loss, fitness, and also my business and my continuing education. Investing in myself is always worthwhile, in my opinion. Um, because you're going to get where you want to be so much faster than if you just keep doing the same stuff over and over again. That hasn't worked before and expecting different results. Number eight. And our last one is majoring in the minors. So what I mean by this is really fixating on these small minute things instead of nailing the basics. So thinking of like eating at specific times or tracking every single macro or obsessing over, um, just these tiny details like fasted cardio or having to do cold therapy or sauna if you're doing all of these things. Great. Let that be the icing on the cake. However, if you haven't actually built the cake yet, if you haven't made the cake, baked the cake, then these things don't matter. Okay, so the cake would be the really big movers when it comes to fat. So nailing your calorie deficit in a sustainable way. Also focusing on food quality. Getting good micronutrients through the foods that you're eating, your proteins, your veggies, your fruits, your fiber, your good quality complex carbohydrates, trying to eat in a low glycemic manner and getting good quality healthy fats. Those types of things that will contribute to healthy gut, um, healthy hormones. Overall healthy body as you are in a calorie deficit. Actually, consistently lifting weights and doing weight bearing activities at least 3 to 4 times a week. Going for walks consistently. Getting your non exercise activity up. Um sleep quality stress management. Those are the things that are going to make the biggest difference and actually move the needle for fat loss. Whereas things like your supplements taking bcaas. Um, when, when you're eating like how many meals a day you're eating fasted cardio, those things are not going to make a big difference. Okay? So focus on the things that matter the most first consistently over time. And then you can kind of add in these smaller minute things. If you want to kind of tinker around with some biohacking or some little things that will improve your health, because I'm not saying that those things are bad to focus on, but they're not the most important. Okay, so make sure that you're nailing the basics first, and then you can move to the more kind of complicated or, um, you know, specific strategies to just hone things in and really dial in your overall health. All right, you guys, we made it through our list. I hope that this has been helpful. Um, now that we know kind of what not to focus on. Um, if you are interested in understanding how to really nail the basics, what these basics look like in your life, that will make a difference for fat loss. Maybe you've tried all of these things and you're like, I totally am that person who, five years later, I'm still kind of in these vicious cycles. I'm still trying to things that aren't working. And I really want to actually make a difference, um, and see some serious fat loss that I can sustain long term. Then I highly recommend checking out Mountain Metabolic Coaching. That is what we do. We also have an emphasis on outdoor activities and stamina. Um, on the trails, if that's something that you're interested in. But if you are also just interested in body composition change, we do that too. Okay. So um, if that sounds like something that you are looking for, then check out the link in the show notes to our application. Um, we would love to chat with you and just see if it's a good fit based on what your experience has been, what you're looking for, what success looks like for you, all of that. Um, so you can check the link in the show notes there. You can also message us on Instagram at the Fit Underscore for Hiking Instagram page. Um, start a conversation. Just say, hey, I'm interested in coaching and I'd love to learn a little bit more. And we will go from there. Um, it was so nice to chat with you today. I hope that this episode has been helpful. If it was helpful, give us a share, give us a shout out, or leave us a rating and review. It's very, very helpful for small podcasts like us. Um, thank you so much for tuning in today and I will chat with you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the fit for hiking podcast. As always, I hope it leaves you feeling inspired and informed on how to take your health and adventure into your own hands. For more content like this, be sure to follow along with my daily posts at Ponytail Underscore. On a trail that's ponytail underscore on a trail. You can also stay up to date on my new episodes being released at Fit Underscore for hiking, and find more free resources at Pony Tail on a trail.com. Happy and healthy trails.