What’s best? Cardio or weight training for weight loss?
This is a debate that is still going on ( although it shouldn’t be ) but we need to look at the bigger picture.
There’s a large percentage of us that when we first join the gym or start exercising it is for weight loss, look better, feel better and move better, basically better overall health and fitness but yet most will seem to think the best way of achieving this is on the Cardiovascular equipment 🤦🏻‍♂️🙄 when really they want a overall body transformation.
If you want to know what burns more calories in a 30 minute session then yes a cardio session would do that….for example
If you weigh 160 pounds (73 kg), you will burn about 250 calories per 30 minutes of jogging at a moderate pace
If you were to run at a faster pace of 6 miles per hour, you would burn around 365 calories in 30 minutes
On the other hand, if you weight trained for the same amount of time, you might only burn around 130–220 calories.
Although a weight-training workout doesn’t typically burn as many calories as a cardio workout, it has other important benefits
For example, weight training is more effective than cardio at building muscle, and muscle burns more calories at rest than some other tissues, including fat, because of this, it is commonly said that building muscle is the key to increasing your rest metabolism ( that is, how many calories you burn at rest )
In men, weight training led to a 9% increase in resting metabolism. The effects in women were smaller, with an increase of almost 4%
While this may sound good, it’s important to think about how many calories this represents.
For the men, resting metabolism increased by about 140 calories per day. In women, it was only about 50 calories per day.
Thus, weight training and building a little bit of muscle won’t make your metabolism skyrocket, but it may increase it by a small amount.
So…..what to do about it?
No matter what your goal may be it is vital to first and foremost to address our nutrition ( no matter your goal our nutrition is key to our success ). We need to find out what our body needs nutritionally ( Carbs, Fats, Protein ) to help us to not only fuel and give us energy to achieve this goal but to also help us recover, help our muscles and tissues to repair.
Secondly….get your ass off that cardio equipment and start lifting some weights, 3 to 4 times a week if possible! Then your supplement to lifting weights could be what ever you chose ( running, rower, crosstrainer, swimming, classes, hiit, metcon ) this will help keep your fitness levels up or increase them.
Remember we want a transformation so stop focusing on what the bloody scales are saying! Take measurements, photo’s and work on a transformation
Robhamill 