Top Health Engineer Tests How Much Fat You Can ACTUALLY Lose Walking Instead of Running: 20-Days

20 days ago, I began a 100 day experiment to determine whether walking is in fact superior to running for maximizing stubborn fat loss. As an engineer and former scientist, I personally hate it when people don't show you the actual results. So, I'm going to show you my actual results and I'm also going to show you the data and lock so that you can repeat it for yourself.

And that data includes anything that anybody said makes a difference like appetite, activity, etc. And my thing is that I'm actually cheering for walking to lose because I like running. Running was a huge positive force for me in my life. It helped me lose 94 lbs in the summer after grade 8 and that started a lifelong obsession with health for me.

I did an undergraduate in medical biohysics and biochemistry from Western University where I went on to do high impact research during my masters and then I decided to bring my expertise to the industry as a health engineer, a privilege that allows me to make software that saves lives every day. And I use that expertise in this video to help people with their stubborn fat loss goals. In particular, we're going to find out if walking is in fact superior to running for stubborn fat loss.

This video is going to cover the first checkpoint, which is the first 20 days of walking. All right, so now before I started this 100 day experiment, this is what my ab region looked like. You can see that my abs weren't particularly visible, especially the lower ones. And I do I do a belly roll because I feel like it gives you a better idea of how much fat is actually there.

It allows you to visualize them much better than just like a stupid bathroom pose. I also got my starting weight on video, but what we care about is stubborn fat loss, right? Not just actual weight. All right, so let me tell you what actually happened. Let's start with the overall data. This is a time graph of how many calories I ate and the deficit.

You've got calories on the y- axis and days on the x-axis. The calories are in blue and the deficit is in yellow. and my deficit was entirely calculated by my smartwatch. I definitely recommend getting a smartwatch if you are trying to lose fat. Smartwatches capture subtle things like going to the grocery, doing a 10-minute walk, maybe even chores.

Actually, knowing those is important because you want to make sure that you don't undereat or overeat. Like neither sides is good. And in the graph, you can see that the deficit is pretty consistent. In general, I was aiming for no more than a 500 calorie deficit. Now, I could do a higher deficit if I wanted to lose more weight, but I actually have a history of extreme dieting in a way that it really messed up my metabolism or slowed down my metabolism for a while.

So, it's very important that I don't do that. And it's also very important that you don't do that because it really does have that effect. Like, my metabolism got so slow that I was gaining weight at 1,200 calories a day. It was bad. And if you still want to go against that advice, I strongly recommend applying Albert's law to determine how much weight you can safely lose or the upper limit of calorie deficit that you could have while actually losing fat.

So Albert's law just says it's about 31 calories per kilogram per pound. So if you have about 30 lbs of fat, I definitely would not do a deficit of more than 900 calories a day. So that means if you're burning 3,000, make sure you at least eat 2100. But honestly, I believe that even that deficit would slow down your metabolism.

Anyway, even though my deficit was consistent, some bars are obviously higher. And that's because there were days where I naturally had higher levels of activity. So for example, on Sundays, I like to take my phone calls. And so I end up walking a lot more because I like to talk while I'm on the phone.

And that's because I don't like to just be on the phone without moving around. So I like to walk and talk. And so on those days, I end up burning like an extra 500 calories. And then usually at the end of the day, I'll actually realize that and I'll end up having to eat a much bigger meal than I could.

To show you what I'm talking about, here's an example from one of those days. And you can see me regretting it because that big dinner eventually made it hard to sleep. Eating 2,300 calories yesterday was not a challenge at all. I was actually still hungry by the end of the meal. But then about 30 minutes later after the food is digested, I felt like I ate a lot of food and I couldn't um it was hard for me to sleep like I normally do on my stomach.

I actually have to sleep on my back or my side. All right. All right. Now, in terms of the actual exercises that I did, the big difference between walking and running, besides the exact mechanics is heart rate. And so, for my experiment, I'm actually focusing on heart rate. Now, I know if I'm walking outside, I can get my heart rate as high as 130.

And so, that's what I aimed for in my walking sessions. And I mostly walked, but I don't really like the optics of walking all the time. So, at the gym, I'll use the stair climber for example. And also, I like how the stair climber feels on my knees. It It is really nice. Now, here are some examples of my stair climb summaries.

And you can see that I maintain my heart rate at about 130. All right. Now, for measuring food, I find it easiest to count by just consuming whole things. And I don't mean like whole foods or anything. I actually mean like entire things. So, for example, I'll have a whole can of beans because I know exactly what's in it.

I'll just have to multiply it by the number of servings in the container, right? So, if it says 80 calories, I'll just multiply that by 3. 5 and I'll get 280. Um, but obviously, I don't actually like write it down. I just log it into an app, whatever app there is. There are a lot of great apps. I prefer ones that allow you to get all the nutritional information.

So, carbs, proteins, and fats just by scanning the barcode. Okay, so let's get into the actual results. Now again, the goal is to just lose stubborn fat. And what better way to measure that than to look at it like that is what you're trying to do. You're trying to remove the appearance of stubborn fat.

You could try to like measure whatever metric, but at that point, you're just making it a game that is not actually directly related to what it is you're literally trying to improve. you can literally see it. So, the best way to do that is to have detailed progress videos. And by that, I mean just like a video that tells you exactly where your fat is.

So, I like to do these belly roll videos. So, you can see here I have day zero, I have day 20. Sometimes it's hard to see a difference because of water retention. All right, so it's only day 19. So, almost day 20, but I am noticing a difference today. And just in case the water retention changes tomorrow, I thought I'd take a video.

Yeah, it was 184 in the morning. It's very easy to get water retention around that ab region, but it still is the best way to look at how much stubborn fat you're doing. You just have to be patient and consistent. And obviously, you have to be honest to yourself. And by being honest to yourself, I mean like having one meal outside is probably not going to make you gain a pound of fat unless you actually had an excess of about a pound of fat.

in excess, I mean after the calories that you actually spend that day. And just the way you got to resist the temptation to do that every day, have a meal outside, you also got to resist the temptation to extreme diets. Anyways, I thought this was a great start. The next phase of this is a 20-day run, which I'm really excited about.

I'm already on day four, and I got to be honest, so far I am a bit surprised. But if you want to see the results, you got to subscribe. Yeah. Hey. Hey.