Transcription
The stipulation was you don't have to change your diet at all. You eat the cakes, the candies, the cookies, desserts. You drink your beer. You do everything. You make no difference whatsoever.
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Coach Greg, in today's video, I'm going to be answering an absolutely fantastic question. I answered it on my Instagram stories. I thought, "No, this is worth a video." Guy named Billy wrote me an IG private message. He DM'd me and essentially he wanted to know this: How much cardio would the average American that you know, they're overweight, they're out of shape, how much cardio would they have to do per day, per week, whatever, in order to get down to 15% body fat if they don't want to change their diet whatsoever? They're not going to adjust the way they eat. They're not switching to Diet Coke. They're not going to eat from your cookbook, and they're not going to lift weights. They just want to do cardio. That's it. They want to be healthy. They want to get to 15% body fat, which you said in so many videos that's what you want to be.
I'm going to answer this. You might be thinking, "No, you couldn't. There's no amount of cardio." Trust me, if you do enough cardio, not only will you get to 15% body fat, you literally would struggle to keep it that high. You're thinking, "No, it's not true." Guys out there like Layne Norton, highly knowledgeable or Nick, guys like this are saying, you know, it's not cardio that's the answer. And the reason why cardio doesn't burn that many calories in comparison. If you just put the fork down and don't eat the food, it's easier to lose weight. I don't disagree with them. It's easier to just not eat something than to do an hour of cardio.
But here's the problem: People aren't going to want to adjust their diets. They're not going to want to stop eating pizza. They're not going to want to stop drinking pop. They're wanting to have their cake and eat it too. And so, if you want to eat everything and anything that your heart desires and you don't want to give two shits about your diet, if you do cardio and enough of it, you will get to your ideal body fat percentage. And in today's video, we're saying it's 15%.
And so, the first thing, you know, it's going to have to take some time. And so, even though you do the appropriate cardio, you're first going to have to drop that body fat percentage from, let's call it 25% body fat, which is basically obese for a man. And to get that down to 15%, it's going to take some time. But how much time? Well, truly, it depends. It depends on your fitness level. It depends on how many calories you can burn. Depends on your cardiovascular system. And the better shape you are, the more calories you can burn, the easier you're going to get there.
If I were overweight right now, as in 25% body fat and want to get down to 15%, it's going to be very, very easy. If I just quit the gym, took six months off, never lifted weights, went on holiday, ate and drank myself into oblivion, just said, "Ah, screw it. I don't care. I don't want to have abs. I don't want to be in shape. I don't want to look at a weight ever again." Or perhaps I broke a leg and I just gave up on life and I just didn't give a... Do you know how fast I would get back to 15% body fat? It'd be like that. Because not only is there muscle memory for your muscles, there's muscle memory for your heart. Once you've been extremely cardiovascularly fit, you can get it that much easier. I used to do running races, triathlons, cycling, and sometimes I would take the winter off. I would just lift weights. But when I came back into summer, in a matter of months, I was faster than ever before. It comes very fast.
I'm going to start by answering this question. I believe that if most people were to do six hours of cardio a week at a moderately intense level, that they were pushing themselves harder than last time, that they were exerting effort, that they were trying, that in six hours of cardio a week, that they would be at 15% body fat and or less.
Here's how: If you ride a bike, run, or whatever, at 166 Watts, which is not that difficult for somebody who's been practicing training, let's call it for six months to a year, about one watt per pound body weight. And so, if you're 166 pounds, you put out 166 Watts, you do that for an hour, you're going to burn 600 calories. It's roughly equivalent of jogging close to six miles in an hour. And for somebody who's of average shape, 25% body fat, if you've been practicing for six months, a year, it's not going to be that difficult. It's not an elite level fitness. It's not asking for too much.
And so, in comparison, 600 calories. I can easily do over a thousand. And so, you'd be burning a little bit more than half of the calories that I'm burning. And so, it's not that difficult. And so, if you're burning off 600 calories in a man, this is a lot of math. People are going to tune out, but whatever. If you're burning off 600 calories per session, you're doing six sessions a week, that's 3600 calories. It's about one pound of fat a week.
Now, remember, Layne Norton and everyone else is going to say, "Yeah, but when you burn off all these calories, your body is going to make you hungrier." And this is true. Think of it: You've just burned off 600 calories. You're now in a deficit. Your body is going to increase ghrelin hormones to make you hungrier. But it only does that by 50%. And so, what's going to happen subconsciously is you're going to eat 300 calories more. And so, although you burn off 600 calories, your body is naturally going to make you eat 300 extra calories.
When I race bikes all day, for example, if I did a two-hour bike race, burn off close to 2,000 calories, what happens is later in the evening, before bed, I start eating. It could be my anabolic strawberry cheesecake, some anabolic muffins, some leftover French toast in the fridge, whatever. I just keep eating and eating and eating. And sometimes it's 2,000 calories. My body is making me eat back the calories that I burnt off. The closer you are to your ideal body fat percentage, or even you might be below that, your body compensates by making you eat back all of those calories.
And so, if I go on, for example, a five-hour bike race and I burn off 4,000 calories, my body's going to say, "You need to eat 4,000 calories. You're at 7.5% body fat. This is very low. We don't want you to be leaner." And so, it makes me eat all of them back. But if you're at 50% body fat and you burn off 4,000 calories by walking all day long, your body's not going to say, "You need to eat 4,000 calories." It's going to make you only want to eat half of them, perhaps around 2,000 calories. And so, that is why doing cardio allows you to lose weight.
And so, because of this, the 600 calories you burn off, it really only becomes 300. And 300 calories times six days in the week you're doing cardio, you get the day off, it equals to about half a pound of fat that you've lost in a given week. And to get down to 15% body fat, let's assume you're 200 pounds, you're going to have to lose 27.2 pounds of fat. So, it's going to take you roughly one year to get down to 15% body fat by doing one hour of cardio six days a week.
And so, you're thinking, "Oh, that's too long." 95% of diets fail. This is a sure thing. This is guaranteed. If you continue to do this cardio and you burn off those calories and you don't eat them back, it's going to happen naturally. Remember, the stipulation was you don't have to change your diet at all. You eat the cakes, the candies, the cookies, desserts. You drink your beer. You do everything. You make no difference whatsoever. This is not taking into account dietary changes that you've read my books and eating my meals or anything. This is eating like eating your exact diet that you're eating right now.
And so, in a year, you're going to be your ideal healthy weight in one year. This doesn't sound too bad now, is it? And that's from only doing one hour, six days a week. Imagine if you did more. Now, remember, if you're extremely overweight, for example, you're 50% body fat, it's going to take a lot longer. Might take you two, three, maybe even four years. But what could you do? Compensate. You could keep increasing cardio. Guy like Bradley Martyn, who is at 574 pounds, clearly his metabolism is slower than many of us. He has more ghrelin hunger hormones. He's going to want to eat more. And so, for him to get down to 15% body fat and keep it there, he might need to do a lot more cardio. Might need to do 10 hours of cardio. And why? Well, it's to offset the fact that he has a different metabolism, differences in hunger hormones, that he's perhaps hungrier than last time. And that all bodies are different.
And if you have a lower set point, you might not need to do six hours. 150 minutes of cardio. You might be eating whatever and anything you want and you have visible abs. No problem. We all know people like that. They're hardly doing any exercise, hardly any training. They seem to eat whatever they want, but yet they have a six-pack. These people just have faster metabolism. They don't have to worry about it as much.
Now, as you begin to approach your ideal body fat percentage, let's call it 15% body fat, your body's going to replace more than 50% of the calories that you're burning off. And so, what once had you eating back 300 calories out of 600, now it might become 400, 500, and so on. Eventually, those 600 is going to be replaced by 600. That is when you're at your maintenance and or set point. So, for example, if you look at my photos for the last several years, you'll notice my body fat percentage is always within a couple of percentage points. It doesn't continue to fall.
Now, if I were to suddenly double up my cardio, for example, if I started doing 12 hours of cardio a week instead of six and double the amount of calories I'm burning, my body would begin to get a bit leaner. It would say, "Hey, Coach Greg, this is a lot of cardio. We're not going to make you eat all that back. We're going to get you a bit lighter." And just think of it like this: Your body wants you to be lighter. The more cardio you're doing, the less efficient you are at moving around. And so, if you were once a 200-pound person and by doing a lot of cardio, you're burning fat, you become perhaps a 150-pound person, that requires less energy demands on the body. And so, you're more efficient at moving around. You're better at it.
And so, if you look at world-class athletes in marathons and or triathlons or perhaps in the Tour de France cyclists, notice how skinny they are. They might be 6 feet tall and 150 pounds, and that's considered big. Look how jacked that cyclist is. He's 6 feet and 150. And so, the reason for that is when you're leaner, you have less weight to carry, less calories to burn, and you're more efficient. It's just better for you overall. And so, your body is trying to find the best balance for what you're doing.
And so, if you're a lazy piece of shit and you sit on the couch all day long, you do absolutely nothing, and you blame other people for your metabolism and you think, "I'm just going to take some Ozempic and I'll lose the weight. It's perfect. I want to be like Oprah Winfrey." If you're one of those kinds of people, well, your body's thinking, "Why would I want you to be skinny? Why do you need to be skinny? You're just sitting on the couch. Why should I make you skinny?"
In comparison, if you're that lazy piece of shit and you said, "I watched the Coach Greg video and I don't want to be lazy anymore. I'm going to start doing six hours of cardio a week." Your body's thinking, "I don't want you to be 200 pounds. Why would I do that to you? We don't want so much strain in the joints. We don't want to put so much work on your body." And so, we're going to make you leaner. And so, by doing that, it's going to say, "Hey, I want you to eat 300 more calories. Even though you burn off 600, we're not going to make you more hungry. Keep eating the donuts, the fries, and the burgers. It's no problem. We're going to make you leaner anyway because you deserved it because you're very active."
And if you up that to 10 or 12 hours a week, it's thinking, "Gez, we really need to make this person skinny. We're going to make them even less hungry." They're perhaps eating 3,600 calories a day like Coach Greg, and yet they're single-digit body fat. Do you think I could get up to 15% body fat right now if I tried? I'm at 7.5%. Do you know how much I would have to eat and put into my diet? How I would have to force feed myself? Eat nuts and peanut butter, fries, bacon, cheeseburgers, cakes, ice cream all the time. If I had to get to 15% body fat to save my life, it would be hard.
You're thinking, "There's no way. That doesn't make sense." Well, the fact is, the reality is my body does not want me to be fat. It wants me to have abs. Wants me to... It supports that action because of my behaviors. And my behaviors are doing cardio, being active. I have a fast metabolism. And rightly so. I have a lot of muscle. Muscle is more metabolically active. And I do a lot of cardio. And so, why would my body want me to be fat? It wants me to survive. And so, in order to help me survive, it keeps my hunger lower. If you do a lot of cardio, your hunger is lower in comparison to people who do not.
That is why, if you look around at the average person who's running marathons, cycling, doing triathlons, swimmers, and so on, guys who are very, very active in comparison to those who are not, the people who are very active are often leaner. Why? Because their bodies are making them leaner. It's how it works. It's hormonal. It's ingrained in our nature, in our DNA. And so, you're thinking, "There's no way that cardio works the way that Coach Greg does. He's full of it. Cardio is not the best way. The best way is to just eat less."
Your body doesn't want you to eat less because your body likes you when you're fat. When you're sitting on a couch watching TV and doing nothing, your body's like, "Why would I want you to be 15% body fat? I don't want that. I like eating. Tastes good. Sugar's delicious. I want you to eat another pack of Twizzlers because it's yummy." But when you're doing cardio and you're active, your body's thinking it's 50,000 years ago and you have to survive. It's thinking, "Why would I want this person to weigh 200 pounds when he has to walk 15 miles every freaking day? It's a lot of extra weight to carry." And so, it keeps you leaner.
Have you ever thought of it like that? You're thinking, "Oh, no, the body doesn't understand what's going on. It doesn't want me to do this." What do you think hormones are for? Hormones are to make you do what you're supposed to do. Think of it: Your body starts producing more testosterone when you're a teenager. You're going through puberty. And all of a sudden, you're looking at all the ladies. Perhaps you're trying to get harder than last time. Why do you think that biology, human nature, we've evolved to be this way? We've evolved to go to the gym and look at what people have eaten for breakfast with their tight freaking pants and their half-naked bodies. We've evolved to want to look at other people. It's in our DNA. And to the same extent, we've evolved to have lower levels of body fat when we have to move more. Does this make sense? Do you understand it now?
And so, if you want to improve your cardio, if you want greater endurance, why not try GO2MAX? It helps you have more endurance, more energy. You can go further, longer. You can go faster than last time. I'm not talking about the bedroom. Talking about on the bike, cardio, swimming, and so on. And so, if you want harder than last time for the bedroom or GO2MAX for cardio, please consider clicking the link in the description, using code GREG to save yourselves 15% off.
And so, if you ask me, what is the one thing that people can do to dramatically improve their body fat percentage? I'm going to say the answer is cardio. You might be thinking, "No, it had to be diet. Had to be lifting weights. Lifting weights over cardio any day of the week." I'm telling you, it's not. You're thinking, "Yeah, well, muscle's more metabolically active." And I'm thinking, "Yeah, it is. Muscle is more metabolically active than fat. But you know what burns even more calories? Doing cardio."
I'm burning 1,000 calories in an hour. I'm not saying you have to race harder than last time like Coach Greg. But if you just burn one watt per pound of body weight for an hour, if you're 166 pounds, that's only 600 calories per hour. It's not that difficult if you train for it. Your first day, I don't think you're doing it 166 watts for an hour on your first day. That's very good. If you are born with that, you are born to be lean. Trust me. If you have such an efficient energy production system, you're like a Lance Armstrong of the world. You know how easy it is for Lance to be lean? "Oh, I'm going to bike racing. I'll burn 1,500 calories in an hour." You know how easy it is to be lean when you can burn off 1,500 calories in an hour? You go and do one hour cardio and you eat whatever you want. Easy.
But if you're severely out of shape, like you're like a Coach Greg who suffers from asthma, you may not know this, had to work harder than almost anyone. But look how I did. Do I have amazing genetics for cardio? Nope. Horrible genetics. But I outworked it. Am I at an elite level for endurance? Absolutely not. If you asked me to race against all the Zwifters and bike races and so on for an hour and say, "Let's just go. How far can you go in an hour?" I can barely beat half of them. But yet, in a sprint, I can beat almost everyone. And why is that? Because look how I'm built. Do I look like a cardiovascular athlete? Do I look like a guy that you are worried about beating you in a marathon? I don't think so. But what about for 20 seconds? I'm built for power and speed. And so, when you put me on a bike, it's like asking me to break the Guinness World Record for sumo deadlift in a minute. I'm putting every ounce of power into the pedals, into the bike, to see how fast can I go. And for the most part, it's faster than almost everyone. And that's why I do well in bike races. Do I have the endurance? Absolutely not. And so, what is my goal in bike racing? To get to the sprint so I can beat everyone there. And what is their goal? To go faster than last time so that by the time the sprint's there, Coach Greg isn't even there. He can't keep up. They're faster than me.
And so, if you want to stay lean, do more cardio. The more cardio you do, the leaner you're going to get. The leaner you're going to be. And if you do too much cardio, you will in fact struggle to keep on body fat. You'll also struggle to keep on muscle. Think of it: If I did 30 hours of cardio a week, do you think I would have pectorals, biceps, delts, and so on? Absolutely not. The body would be thinking, "Coach Greg, we know you like muscles, but too bad. You've been riding your bike freaking five hours a day, six days a week. It's ridiculous. We're going to lose all of those muscles. We'll keep some of the quad muscles because you got to spin the bicycle, but the biceps, we're done. The pecs, we don't need those." And so, I would shrivel up from being 185 pounds to perhaps 140 pounds. And I would look more like the cyclist that you see in the Tour de France, many of which are even under 130 pounds at 5'6". And the reason for that is when you're lighter, you don't have to put as much power. It's going to save on calories. And that is how the body works.
Let me know in the comment section, did you learn something? Do you now believe me about how cardio is so invaluable in terms of keeping your body fat percentage low? How it's not only good for your heart, but it's good for keeping you lean? And if you don't want to lose all your muscles, obviously do the six hours of cardio a week and lift weights twice a week. Your entire body twice a week. It's all you need. This is the blueprint for what I do. This is on average what I do in any given week. And so, I'm not saying you'll look like Coach Greg if you copy my training regimen because I do have very good genetics for building muscle and I am of course on HRT and I trained harder than last time my entire life. But if you copy what I'm doing, I'm certain that you too can achieve a level of health, 15% body fat, and have realistic goals that you can achieve.
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