Q: I told my personal trainer I want to do a 28-day blitz diet as I can’t see the results I want and she scolded me like an angry parent. How long does it really take to see results from an exercise programme?
A: If patience is a virtue then we live in the era of iniquity — compounded and accelerated by our addiction to instant messaging and social media. No, The Water Cooler does not dispense reactionary conservatism. It’s the home of realism.
Recently, I experienced first-hand how our experiences and expectations have changed. I sent a WhatsApp to someone I hold in high esteem. It was read almost instantly. The torturous death by blue tick. Do yourself a favour and google “blue-tick anxiety”.
The recipient of my message, going on with their life and navigating real-world issues no doubt, had no idea of the insecurity those two blue ticks caused. That’s irrational behaviour. A quarter of a century ago I would wait for weeks, patiently but excitedly, for the postman to deliver a letter from abroad in an envelope with a blue and red border that proudly proclaimed “Air Mail — Par Avion”.
Yet, in 2022, my WhatsApp contact’s silence tortured me. It’s no wonder most delivery apps don’t have direct customer call centres to deal with the wrath of someone waiting 30 minutes too long for their cheese burger.
We consume instant headlines, toxicity and fake news on Twitter. We track friends’ “perfect” lives on Facebook as they happen. God only knows what people do on TikTok. We curate — an overused marketing term — experiences of our choice on Instagram. Sometimes, we land on fitness, diet and exercise accounts with astounding body and fitness transformations. We develop expectations that are either entirely delusional or only possible with dangerous drugs — which is really not where we want, or need, to be.
Of course, you could starve and overtrain yourself on a 28-day blitz, fry your adrenal glands and damage your health, and then rebound faster than an ANC politician
How long do results take? That’s like asking, how long is a piece of string? It’s the wrong question. You should be asking: how long is my piece of string? Gauging from your question your goals appear to be centred on losing weight.
Your goal depends on a number of factors, including your age, body type, gender and hormones. It’s also dependent on how you eat, which affects hormones, and how you exercise. Simplistically speaking, in the absence of other health issues, you’d need to burn about 3,500 calories a week to lose a pound of fat. See — everything is in American and so we really stand little chance.
What that means in the metric world, is that you need to eat 500 calories fewer every day to lose about 1.8kg in a month. A 100g slab of chocolate has about 500 calories, and it would take a nonstop 40-minute run to “burn off” the equivalent calories. Weight loss is a pursuit of discipline.
Of course, you could starve and overtrain yourself on a 28-day blitz, fry your adrenal glands and damage your health, and then rebound faster than an ANC politician.
If you start running, for example, you’d notice improvements in your cardiorespiritory fitness within weeks. If you’d like to see real, noteworthy improvements, you need to persist for months. If you’ve been running for a long time, to improve your speed and efficiency, you need even more time.
Bid farewell
If you want to build muscle, it takes even longer. While you will “see changes” in a few weeks, it will take months, and years, to enjoy substantial change, and that also depends on a number of factors, such as age, gender, body type and how you eat.
If you stop running, your cardiovascular fitness will start decreasing fairly quickly, while muscle tends to hold on just a little longer before it starts to bid you farewell. Again, there are no universal averages. Sam’s transformation may well have taken 12 weeks, but maybe yours is six months or a year — it depends on the person and how they manage their own piece of string.
One of the side effects of investing in an exercise and eating programme is that it teaches you grit, perseverance and the ability to appreciate the bigger picture. If you do what you need to do, without cheating, you will make impressive strides. It won’t be linear, and it won’t be at the same pace as your friends, but it will happen.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.