This article is going to be controversial for many because for some people, cardio is their bread and butter.
When people want to start losing weight or just drop a few pounds so they can fit into a dress for a wedding or simply just look better for the summer time, what do most people think about? Cardio of course, at least for me, I always paired losing weight with running on a treadmill.
What Does Cardio Mean & What Is It For?
When most people including myself think or hear the word cardio, I think about a treadmill, a bike, elliptical, or just running outside. What a lot of people may not know is that Cardio is short for Cardiovascular. What is cardiovascular? It is relating to your heart and blood vessels. The real purpose of cardio is for your heart health. It’s to make your heart healthier and help you pump blood more effectively through the body. Yes cardio can help you lose weight in long term but it’s miserable and it’s hard on your joints.
How Does One Lose Weight?
To lose weight, it’s simply this: Burn more calories than you intake. This is called a Calorie Deficit. So if you run on a treadmill for 1 hour and you burn 1,000(which is a lot) but then you eat 1,500 calories, you will just cancel out the cardio. The running on the treadmill is still great for your health but it’s not going to help you lose weight if you are intaking more calories than you burn.
You can lose weight with diet alone but you can’t lose weight with exercise alone.
Where Do People Go Wrong When Trying To Lose Weight?
There is two places where I believe people go wrong when losing weight. The first place is they workout very intense in the gym but don’t change their diet, resulting in no weight loss. This type of person will either stay the same weight and maintain or they will end up gaining weight but in muscle(which is good for body building but its weight loss that we’re after). They see no results, so they quit. Then you have the other person who goes hard in gym with a lot of cardio but they go even harder outside of the gym with their diet to a point where they are almost starving their body. This person is constantly in a dangerous calorie deficit, where they aren’t getting the proper nutrients throughout the day because of the fear of gaining weight. So they develop eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia. Where they are starving themselves and vomiting after every meal to keep them from gaining weight. This is a self image problem.
After all, getting into shape is mostly a mental battle between the kind of person you were before versus the person you are trying to become. The person you want to become won’t happen if you keep doing the habits you are doing today.
Why Cardio Is A Joke For Weight Loss?
We will answer this question with a question: What’s easier to do, eat 2,000 calories or burn 2,000 calories?
It’s far easier and takes a fraction of the time to eat 2,000 calories than it is to burn 2,000 calories. If your buddy and you ordered a pizza to your house and the challenge was to see who can get to 2,000 calories quicker, you on the treadmill or your buddy eating the pizza, who do you think will get there the fastest? Easily the person eating the pizza will get to 2,000 calories the quickest. This is why cardio is a joke for weight loss, yes it’s great for your health and stamina but it’s not the best way to lose weight.
You can’t out run a bad diet!
Study On Over 700 People On Weight Loss
There was a study on weight loss on over 700 people at the University of Utah Nutrition Clinic and they found that people see the biggest short-term results from eating smart. On average, people who dieted without exercising for 15 weeks lost 23 pounds. The people who only exercised and did not diet lost only 6 pounds over about 21 weeks.
The Best Way To Losing Weight
The best way to losing weight where you will look the best is by strength training and clean dieting, where you get all your recommended nutrients throughout the day. Which means that you workout each muscle group every week by lifting to make your muscles stronger with some cardio. But very low intensity cardio. This is because you want a congruent portion of fat and muscle.
You don’t need to kill yourself by running 20 miles a day to lose weight, you just need to exercise your muscles and eat healthy. 80% is diet and 20% is exercise. This is for whatever goals you have, even if that’s trying to gain muscle, or just simply gain weight, diet is most important.
You can run all the miles you want on a treadmill but if you choose to eat a big unhealthy meal after the cardio, it’s not going to matter for losing weight. You will either maintain or gain.
Exercise is important to good health but diet is important for losing weight and gaining muscle. No matter what, the diet beats every exercise you do in the gym.
That is why cardio is joke to losing weight, it can help only when your diet is on point.
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