If your goal is to lose fat, it’s likely you’ve asked yourself the tricky question: “Should I do cardio or lift weights?”
Most people tend to automatically presume that the answer to this question lies in whichever one burns the most calories. Generally, you will burn more calories per session of cardio than you will when weight training with the same amount of effort and intensity. With this in mind, most gym goers then attempt to walk, run, and cycle their way to the fat loss they desire.
It is not quite as simple as this, however…
Following such advice by itself rarely achieves the desired results. Running, for example, won’t cause much fat loss by itself. What it will do is help you achieve a very high level of fitness if you do it correctly. Cardiovascular activities exercise the heart indirectly by stressing the major muscles of the body. Rowing, for example, works the muscles of the legs, upper back, and arms. By doing so, the heart must pump blood to these muscles at a much faster rate than when the body is at rest. When the heart is regularly worked (at least 3 times a week) at a level that it finds uncomfortable, it is forced to adapt and strengthen to make such exercise more manageable. The heart does this by increasing the “stroke volume”, the amount of blood it pumps per heartbeat. This enables it to supply the muscles with the required amount of blood with fewer heartbeats. As a result, the heart isn’t so overstressed as it can complete the required work with far less effort.
“But what about all of the calories the exercise machines tell me I burn during every session?”
Unfortunately, people tend to accept such figures as fact and will accept them unconditionally and without question. In many cases, the “calculations” provided are very loose to put it mildly. Machine manufacturers want you to buy and use their exercise equipment, so they often make grossly exaggerated claims as to how many calories they burn every session. There are a lot of extremely fit, yet grossly overweight people out there. Many invest hours of time and effort into cardio exercise, wondering why they still look and weigh pretty much the same!
If you are serious about permanently losing weight, be aware of the incredible benefits of starting a strength- training program. The following statistics may startle you and should help you realise where you have been going wrong in your past attempts to lose weight.
Past the age of 25, adults, both male and female, lose between half a pound to a pound of muscle every year. This has a noticeable effect on the strength of an individual. He or she is unable to do things as easily as before and casually, yet regretfully, attributes it to “ageing”. Muscle loss has an even more devastating effect on a person’s body composition. Muscle tissue is the most metabolically expensive tissue we have; it takes between 50 to 100 calories a day just to maintain a pound of muscle. If, for example, a 35-year-old female has lost 8 pounds of muscle in the last decade, she will no longer be burning up the 800 calories a day that she did at age 25. So, if she eats the same way she did 10 years ago, she is likely to have gained a considerable amount of excess weight in the form of fat. Therefore, many people gain weight without any change whatsoever in the way they eat. The cause is not ageing, but rather muscle loss. They didn’t “let themselves go”; they simply neglected to keep the lean tissue they had. Therefore, strength training is vitally important for males and females of all ages. In fact, the older you get, the more important strength training becomes.
Focus on getting stronger in the gym to increase your amount of lean body mass. In terms of cardio, you have the choice of doing long, low-intensity exercise (e.g. walking) or shorter, high intensity workouts (e.g. a spinning class). Experiment and find out what works best for you. Cardio should never interfere with either your sleep quality or your recovery in between workouts.
Ultimately, it is vital to understand that the most important factor when it comes to fat loss is your nutrition. To put it simply, six-packs are made in the kitchen and not in the gym. All the exercise in the world, whether it is cardio or weight training, won’t have any noticeable effect on your fat-burning efforts if you aren’t eating more than you’re using throughout the day. So have a good look at your diet first and cut out any bad eating habits you may have. In terms of fat loss, nutrition comes first, followed by weight training, followed by cardio.
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