Myth: A Regimen of “Cardio” Will Burn the Most Fat

Cardiovascular exercise is essential for overall health and fitness, but just doing “cardio” alone as part of a weight loss program will NOT produce the fat loss that most individuals expect. Long term, your ability to burn calories at rest by just doing cardiovascular exercise for fat loss will be greatly decreased.

As a fitness professional I have worked in various fitness centers and witnessed hundreds of people spend countless hours on a treadmill, elliptical, or stationary bike week in and week out, and never see any changes in their body composition. Why? Because cardiovascular exercise doesn’t do anything to build, or even maintain, lean muscle tissue which is a metabolically active tissue. In other words, by just doing “cardio” you will have essentially trained your metabolism to become slower.

Have you ever experienced a plateau effect in your weight loss? You work diligently for about four weeks and see some okay results. But as you continue over the course of several months you see less and less progress. Inevitably frustration sets in and you end up quitting all together. The problem is not that you weren’t working often enough, rather you were not forcing the body to adapt to any new form of stimulus. Over time the body adapts and becomes more efficient at performing tasks…that’s what we call “getting in shape.” So day in day out doing the same thing produces a smaller metabolic effect because the body is more efficient at performing the work.

Now, not only are you training the body to burn fewer calories at rest due to loss of muscle, but you are also preventing the body from being challenged to it’s maximum potential. Furthermore, in order to continue to see results from steady state cardiovascular exercise you have to either run/walk/bike faster OR longer. And unfortunately, there are not enough hours in the day. I think you will agree that spending more time exercising is not exactly what you had in mind when you set out to reach your health and fitness goals.

Quite the contrary. So instead of committing several hours a day to the same old boring “cardio” routine, incorporate the following to maximize the amount of body fat you want to lose:

• Cross Training – use different kinds of stimulus for your cardiovascular conditioning days that will continue to challenge your energy system to produce maximum results.  Incorporate running/jogging, biking, swimming, playing basketball/volleyball, etc.  This will prevent your body from becoming accustomed to any one type of training stimulus
• Resisitance/Strength Training – you absolutely must perform exercises that will challenge the muscle so you can build, or maintain, lean muscle tissue.  This becomes even more important as we age and our metabolism slows down.  Remember, one pound of muscle can burn up to 50 calories per day at rest.  Whether you’re male or female it’s essential to your overall fitness and weight loss goals.  You can even do resistance training in a way that is highly beneficial to your overall cardiovascular health.
• High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) – performing high intensity bursts of maximal effort exercise followed by periods of rest cycled over and over has been shown to be the most effective form of cardiovascular conditioning for weight loss, and more importantly fat loss.  You’ll get maximum calorie burn, and what’s better is that it takes half the time!

It’s not about the amount of calories you burn during a workout…far from it.  You have to focus on what effect the workout has on your overall metabolic rate for several hours after the workout.  Research shows that combining high intensity resistance training with HIIT produces a very high metabolic demand where the metabolism operates at peak levels for up to 4-6 hours after the workout and doesn’t return to resting levels for up to 36 hours.  I’ll tell ya…working hard for 30-40 minutes a few times per week and seeing incredible results sure does sound better than busting my tail everyday for 60-90 minutes to accomplish far less results.

When planning your workouts, assess your goals and determine how much time you are willing to commit to your exercise program.  If you’re like most of us, including me, than time is usually a factor so make the most of it!  If you need help determining what kind of program is right for you just click here to request your fitness and nutrition consultation with a certified Jackson personal trainer today!

To your health and continued success,

Clint Barr