It is an age old debate. When trying to lose weight is it best to do cardio, weights or simply to follow a diet plan? When exercising for weight loss, how intense should the activity be?
The answer is pretty simple. You want to combine all of these activities and you want to keep the intensity high.
Weight training promotes fat loss when done at high intensity. This means bumping up the weight and doing a few more repetitions. To truly be exercising at a high intensity you should barely be able to complete each set. Just remember not to sacrifice form for extra weight. Lift only what you can safely and correctly. And please, throw out your fears of getting "big and bulky." Bodybuilders train tirelessly, for hours each day, tweaking their diet to absolute perfection to obtain their physiques. The likelihood that you are going to look like them if you increase from 10 pounds to 15 pounds is about as likely as winning the lottery.
When it comes to cardio, there is some half truths out there that are confusing people. It is true that low intensity cardio will burn a higher percentage of calories from fat than high intensity. This leads people to believe they should stick to lower intensity cardio training. This only applies if you have excessive amounts of time for exercise or you have a physical limitation that doesn't allow you to train at a high intensity.
So, why train at a high intensity if you can burn more fat at a lower intensity? It comes down to simple math. Walking for 20 minutes you may burn 100 calories, of that 65 per cent would be from fat, meaning you burned about 65 calories from fat. If you had exercised that same 20 minutes at a high intensity you would have burned around 250 calories. Only about 40 per cent of these would be from fat, but that amounts to about 100 calories from fat. You would have burned more total calories and more calories from fat in the same amount of time.
Combining a healthy diet, weight training and cardiovascular training is by far the best option for long term, healthy and sustainable weight loss. When combining them all together, people tend to lose more weight than diet alone and also tend to lose more body fat and less muscle mass. If you don't know how to get started with a plan that combines all of these elements, get help.
Say it! Mean it! Do it!
