Top Health Engineer Tests How Much Fat You Can ACTUALLY Lose Running vs Walking: Days 20 to 40

So, we have 100 days to test running versus walking. Right now, we're on day 40. So, we just finished our first run phase, and we want to see which one's better for getting abs. But to make it fair, because running burns more calories with time, we have to walk a bit longer. And I've got you some really exciting results this time.

I've got the best scientific way to measure fat. So, a DEXA scan. And I'm also doing cortisol measurements to test the hypothesis or theory that running is worse for fat loss because it increases cortisol which reduces the mobilization of fat. And of course, I've got you the ultimate belly roll. I am an air man after all.

And I've done research with some of the best in North America. And now I engineer life-saving software. And I'm using that expertise in this video to answer the question, should you run or walk to maximize fat loss. So, this is where I was before this running phase started 20 days ago. It's not bad, but I've got some fat I could lose.

And this was my weight at 182. 6 lb. So, let's just move this to the left for a comparison. All right. So, this is where I am now after the running phase. I can see an improvement along the middle of the abs mostly. The weight did drop a bit, but not too much. All right, so now let's put it on the right and do the comparison.

I think I see most of the difference around the center in the I guess I don't know, second set of abs or whatever. This right here. Okay, but here's really cool. Now, I don't have a comparison point, but I began to notice my veins popping more. This tends to happen as you lose body fat. Look at these.

That's a lot of veins. That's not so much veins. And that's no veins at all. All right. I know that I called bathroom pick stupid, but I couldn't resist. So, let's pop that baby up. It was good, but it still looks far from my target. Uh, which is Zack Afron. At least I think it looks far. And the look is ultimately what matters because that's the goal.

I want to have visible looking abs. Well, let me give you something that more people agree on for fat loss. DEXA. So, Dexa can measure how much fat you have at each part of your body. It does this basically by shining a light through you and seeing how much gets absorbed. That's very basic explanation for it.

It's kind of similar to how you intuitively estimate the depth of a pool by looking at how much light is reflected or absorbed. You just intuitively do that as a human. But in DEXA, the light is invisible to human eyes and it has a lot more energy, but not too much energy. So, I'm going to do it from now on.

So, the easiest thing to understand in a DEXA report is the body fat percentage. Total body fat percentage. Mine says 12. 6. There is more in the report. We want abs visibility. The closest thing to that on the Dexter report is trunk composition, unfortunately. Um, but surprisingly it says 9. 6% body fat there, which is lower than I expected.

I think maybe there's an error there. Or all 9. 6% or a good chunk of that 7. 7 lbs of fat is in the lower part of my belly. So, and in case you're wondering how my trunk body fat percentage is much lower than my total, about 3%. But apparently, I've got really thick legs, so I'm not surprised. My cows are basically fullgrown cows.

Um, but still I should be able to lose that stubborn body fat. We should get a better idea by day 60. So, subscribe. But it's not that easy. I should be able to lose a stubborn body fat if my cortisol is low. Basically, this is because cortisol longterm inhibits the fat mobilization step. And there are other steps in the fat pipeline.

Transport, oxidation, and reversal steps, but mobilization is the bottleneck. It's like how in a highway if you have closures and only one lane is open and only one car can come out of that lane per second, then the whole highway's maximum cars that can come out per second is also one. So the analogy here is that road closure is mobilization and as our cortisol decreases that closure opens up long term.

Okay. So with all that said let's look at my cortisol level. All right. So my cortisol in the morning should be higher in the morning is 19. 0 which is near the upper end of the reference or average interval. So it's kind of high. That is what you'd expect after a 20-day run phase like a really intense one.

But I'm not sure if that's just because my baseline or it's because of the run. So, we'll have to see after this 20day walk phase. In the PM, it's 10. 6. Also, very close to the upper end of the healthier normal range as 11. 9 is the upper end of that. All right. So, it says AM and PM. The AM1 I did at 8:00 a.

m. The PM1 I did at 2:45 p. m. So, I'm going to do the same thing at the day 60 time point. Then, I think it should reduce by day 60 because I'll be walking. So, subscribe to find out. But before you go looking for that video, I owe you an explanation of what I did over the last 20 days. At the beginning, I had a cheat day.

Uh, this was planned. I'm doing a cheat day every 20 days or every checkpoint. So, surprise. For the actual things that I eat, obviously, there are many options. Uh, but we have a Raisin Canes just down the street, so that's what I chose. Like, obviously, I enjoyed the fried chicken. I didn't really enjoy the fries, but I still ate them because I wanted to make sure that I had like what the meal said it was in terms of nutrition.

It's definitely pretty carby, pretty fatty, unlike what I'm eating mostly dayto-day. Dayto-day, I pretty much eat the same foods in the same order. I'm not sure if I have it like that but also it's mentally super easy. And so for breakfast, I'd get eggs, beans, bread, whey protein, and usually a snack.

And that'll bring it about to 1,200500 calories just all on that breakfast which is after my workout. And then I'll have a 500 calorie lunch consisting of like a can of chili or a bag of salad with limited dressing. And then dinner for most of the days I had 500 calories in the way of half a rotisserie chicken.

I only had skin on the wing. Having a wing without skin is just weird. Uh so that brings it up to about 2500 per day. Um if I burn more than 3,000 calories, then I add whatever to ensure uh the deficit is around 500. Usually it's like the same thing that I've eaten that day. But sometimes I'll even add like a cookie.

As long as you know exactly how much nutrition is there, you don't want to add a cookie that's like 1,000 calories, right? Anyways, to make sure that your deficit doesn't get too large, you need to keep track of how many calories you're eating and spending. I used to struggle with tracking how much I'm spending until I got a smartwatch.

And a smartwatch also like gamified activity for me. So, yeah, that was great. So, invest in a smartwatch if you don't have one. Um, you've got many options. Some of them cost as little as $200, I think. And for me, it's also been very useful for being able to track my heartbeat per minute during cardio.

So I hovered between 160 and 170 during my runs at beats per minute and my heart adapted with every run. So that meant I had to gradually increase my speed. By the end of it, I was about 1 mile faster per hour over the 20 days. So that was pretty cool. So that's based on a 1 hour run which I repeated in this 4day cycle.

So on day one I ran 30 minutes. On day two I ran 60 minutes. So that was my big run day. On day three, I ran 30 minutes and on day four, I ran zero minutes. So, I didn't run because this was leg day. And there's research showing that running so close to leg day is bad for muscle size. I don't know how bad it is, but it seems like a good opportunity for a rest day from cardio.

And I definitely needed those rest days. By the end of this whole thing, my CNS was shot. CNS fatigue, at least for me, is the biggest challenge with cardio if you're trying to maximize fat loss. So, you can't engage your muscles as intensely. So, you can't lift 100%. And if you don't lift at 100%, then you lose more muscle.

If you lose more muscle, then you lose less fat. So, you have to be engaging your muscles very intensely with the correct form. tickets from my favorite athlete, Arnold. And why did they look like [ __ ] is because they didn't concentrate. Kind of like they were bored. Because they didn't even know why they were training.

That they were not inside the bicep. You have to visualize the muscle. I love that. But seriously, I can't emphasize this enough. Like when you're at the gym, I [clears throat] want you to imagine that you're alone, right? Because you have to give it your all. Like don't be embarrassed about how it looks like to give it your all.

like you might look a bit disheveled but that's what a winner looks like right like the winner looks like they're struggling and especially near the end of this running phase I wasn't able to do that as much so that was CNS now let's get into the second challenge a lot of people talk about with cardio appetite okay so people say your appetite gets larger but the research doesn't really agree with that and I ate a bit more on average uh compared to walking I feel like I deserved a protein bar or another snack snack right after my breakfast. But on average, I think it was proportional to the amount of extra calories that I burnt running by accident sometimes. That said, I am very in tune with my appetite.

So, if you're a person that's not very in tune, I suggest watching your calories. Walking will get your appetite up because your appetite is tied to your deficit, but it won't feel as intense or euphoric as it does for running. At least in my experience. And I'm actually enjoying that appetite break now.

And CNN's break that I'm back to a walking phase, phase three. So that's day 40 to day 60. So I'm almost at the halfway point. I should be at the halfway point a week after this video releases. So, but let's see if by day 100 I get those Zack Efron abs. To be honest, I am a bit worried because it looked like running did better than the walking phase, but that could be because there were different starting points.

I don't know. But if you want to see my 100 day decision after all the data is collected, it's