Cardio vs. Strength Training for FAT LOSS

"Hello I'm a girl and I wanna get toned."  

"Hello I'm new to working out and I am going to do lots of cardio and then when I lose weight I'll start lifting to get toned." 

"I don't want to get bulky"

"I need core exercises because my stomach is fat" 

"What are good exercises to get rid of my love handles?"

These are very common things I hear, I hear at least one of these daily lol. Do any of them resonate with you? I mean, I even I know better and they resonate with me. So OK, let's start with why cardio and strength training are different and why I believe one is superior.  

Cardio - let's say your heart rate hovers around 130-150 and you do an hour. So you burn 600 calories in an hour or something like that. Awesome! You burned 600 calories. 

Strength training - let's say your heart rate hovers around 100-180 and you do an hour. So you have short spikes when you do really intense lifts like dead lifts (mine gets up to 180 when I do dead lifts at least) and squats, stuff like that, but during accessory exercises and rests it drops pretty low. So you only burn 400 calories during your 1 hour workout. 

At first it seems like cardio is where it's at, right?

Wrong. 

Your muscles that you beat up are going to use even MORE calories over the next 24-48 hours to recover from that workout. So to be on the safe side, let's just say you burn an additional 10% of your usual daily calorie burn recovering from this workout. So for 2 days, let's add on an additional 400 calories. 

That's 800 calories for strength training and 600 for cardio. (Side note, those stronger muscles use more calories all day too! But I won't get into that)

So right off the bat, that seems simple enough. However, I have one more point against cardio. 

Adaptation. Your body is adaptive. If you were to do 600 calories worth of cardio every single day for the next year, your body is smart. It's not going to use the same amount of energy the first time as it does the 365th time. In fact, it's going to get SO GOOD that after a couple months, you'll probably see almost no fat loss benefits from it. A way around this would be to increase your volume, but who wants to continue to work more and more and more? I love exercise and even I don't want to do that.

But...when it comes to strength training...your body gets stronger and you adjust the weight accordingly. Beating up your muscles and challenging yourself is something that your body cannot really adapt to. So you'll continue to see the benefits even after the 365th time :) Getting leaner & stronger! 

So in short, if you're trying to lose body fat - hit the weights! Do some push ups! If you get to a point where you do not want to put on more muscle, I'll let you know what to do next in another post. 

If you're ready to crush some strength workouts with me, click here! Registration is currently closed but you can get on the waitlist for our next challenge!