Top health engineer exposes SUPERIOR stubborn fat loss decision: running vs walking

If you're under a calorie deficit and you want to lose stubborn fat, but you can't decide between running and walking, know that there is there is a superior choice. I became a health tech engineer after a past in research where I published a popular scientific experiment. I'm going to use those expertise to tell you what is superior running or walking for stubborn fat loss.

So I like to start with engineering method. First you have to define the problem. It's simple. We just want to maximize the loss of stubborn fat. So we have to define stubborn fat. Stubborn fat is the last fat to leave after a diet. For males, that tends to hang around the belly. For females, it's around the glutmoral area.

Next, we have to define some constraints. Our options are running or walking. Now, we can add another constraint to make sure that we stay focused on the problem, which is that we want to lose stubborn fat. The constraint is we got to make sure that we have the same calorie deficit at the end of the day.

It's a very important constraint, but not for the reason most people think. Most people think that it's the quantity of calories that matters. and they referenced this equation, fat loss equals calories in minus calories out. And I actually also used to be one of those people. So like most people, I drew the wrong conclusion from a great experiment.

So the experiment showed that within 24 hours running or walking, if you control for the calorie deficit, you end up with the same percentage of fat oxidation. But the problem with drawing the conclusion from that study is that the variables are different. Specifically for that study, there was no calorie deficit.

When you're on a diet and you're trying to lose stubborn fat, there is a calorie deficit and that makes a huge huge difference. A caloric difference would completely change the result. In statistics, it's called an interaction effect. So, what is an interaction effect? Imagine that you are testing for the visibility of traffic cones and you want to test the effect of color.

You grab neon orange traffic cones and black traffic cones. So you're running your test and you find out that black cones have more visibility than neon orange. So why do you think that might happen? That's because that test was run in Willy Wonka land where something that's black will stand out. So the interaction here, the variable is the environment.

If your environment is completely different, it can change the result. By the way, if you're loving this video, this is a good time to smash that subscribe button. Okay, then. So what about a study where subjects did lose fat and the experiment actually compared running and walking? A lot of people who have a shallow science experience cite the stride study.

The stride study compared running and walking and found that there was no signific significant difference in the amount of total fat mass loss. Again, this has an interaction effect and that's they tested people who are overweight to obese. People who are overweight to obese have a much higher propensity to lose fat.

Whereas, if you're focusing on stubborn fat, you're likely not overweight to obese. You're likely in the normal range. And that's important because people who are overweight to obese have a lot more fat to lose than people who are in the normal range and likely now beginning to struggle with a stubborn fat loss.

That's known as Albert's law and that came from observation. I'm not going to go into depth about that, but basically it says that if you have more fat throughout your body, your body can supply a higher amount of calories from fat. So a lot of the weight that you lose ends up becoming fat. And this is the number right here.

If you're not losing fat, what are you losing? Lean body mass. And I strongly advise against losing lean body mass if you want to lose stubborn fat. But that's another story. And the other thing is that we are also focused on stubborn fat loss where this study measured total fat lost. So now we're forced to have an accurate definition of our goal which is maximizing stubborn fat loss.

So let's go to the math board. So stubborn fat loss can be described as this. It's the amount of fat or lipids that's going into the stubborn fat minus the amount of fat that's going out. For fat going in, you'll often hear of resterification. For fat going out, you'll hear a bunch of things. You'll hear about mobilization, transport, and you'll also hear about fat oxidation.

So oxidation is the part where the fat's actually burnt. Transport, is it leaving the stubborn fat going to the place where it is oxidized? Immobiliz is it going from its inactive state to an active state where it can be transported out. And the good thing is you only need to worry about what is called the bottleneck.

A bottleneck is imagine you're on a highway and there are five lanes and each lane you can have one car passing per second and then you've got a construction site bringing it down to one lane. The maximum speed that people can get out of this highway is going to be limited by that one lane. So if cars move through that lane at one car per second, then that's the maximum speed that you can get throughout the whole highway.

And we want to make that lane, the neck of the bottle, faster. We want to make it wider so that we can fit more cars through it at a time. So what is that link for stubborn fat? Is it reassertification? It can't be reassertification because if it was reassertification that means we have a net calorie gain or stubborn fat is gaining calories from lean mass or glycogen or visceral fat.

That's just not going to happen. Building those is prioritized over building stubborn fat. All right then. So is it oxidation? We know it's not oxidation because both stubborn fat, the belly fat and visceral fat, the rest of the fat, both have to meet in the same pathway. They use the same oxidation pathway.

And visceral fat, which is fat that's not stubborn, is burning a lot easier than stubborn fat. So, we know that that's not the bottleneck. Oxidation has many lanes. Okay. So, next is it transport? If it was transport, you see a lot of fat buildup in the tissue, and you just don't see that in research.

And so, that only leaves mobilization. And research does show that mobilization is the bottleneck. Stubborn fat by definition does not have a lot of what is called beta receptors. And these beta receptors allow lipids or fats to be mobilized out of fat cells. Okay, we've come a long way and we're almost there.

So now our question becomes, what is better at removing that mobilization bottleneck? Is it running? Is it walking? Does it not matter? And we can rephrase that as what actually leads to higher beta receptor activity. So the thing that has the largest effect on beta receptor activity is the amount of beta receptors.

And the thing that has the largest effect on the amount of beta receptors is the concentration of T3. And the thing that has the highest effect on the concentration of T3 is cortisol. So now the question becomes, how can we lower our cortisol so that we can increase the amount of fat that is mobilized and lose stubborn fat?

And remember, because we're trying to lose stubborn fat, we're under a calorie deficit. So we actually need to consider that. And so what the research shows is that if you have a calorie deficit and you add highintensity exercise, you're telling your body that you don't have a lot of resources, and that elevates the amount of cortisol because cortisol is the signal for stress, chronic stress.

So to make sure I'm clear, if you want to lose stubborn fat and you're on a calorie deficit, you do not want to be running. That will get your cortisol chronically elevated. and chronic elevation of cortisol will reduce the amount of fat that you can mobilize. So you can't run that makes walking the better choice.

Now obviously if the deficit is large enough either of them could elevate your cortisol but because the stress of low intensity walks is less you have a much lower risk of elevating your cortisol to a level where it can chronically deactivate your beta receptors and leave you stuck with that stubborn fat. Now, with all that said, I myself love running. So, I'm going to test this on myself.

I'm currently on day 10 of a 100 day experiment where for 20 days I only walk and for 20 days I only run. And I do that two times and at the end I walk. If you want to see the results, make sure you subscribe. Okay. So, thank you for watching this video. In this video, we learned that walking is better for stubborn fat loss because it leads to lower cortisol than running when under a calorie deficit, which means you end up with a larger amount of beta receptor activity, which means you mobilize more stubborn fat, which means you burn more stubborn fat, which means you lose more stubborn fat.

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