Cardio: NOT The First Step to Weight Loss

When people approach me with questions regarding how to get back on track after a period of time away from training, they’ll often say something along the lines of “I’ve gained 15 pounds or so and want to get back to where I was... I’ve been running three times a week and trying to cut back on calories - that’s what I did back in high school/college/another time when fit”.

The last thing I want to do is discourage this person with my response. Any movement is better than no movement and paying attention to what you’re eating is a step in the right direction. Sometimes, though, we might be “climbing a ladder” and not realize it’s the wrong ladder until months have passed. The wrong ladder in this case is performing less productive habits for the goals of weight loss. The commonly seen less productive set of habits would be drastically increasing one’s cardio exercise paired with a drastic decrease in their calorie consumption. This is counterintuitive! Stick with me.

I’m going to outline why cardio alone is an inferior strategy for attaining the body you want, and what a better long-term strategy is.?

Cardio is not ideal for body composition change (fat loss/muscle gain)

If we think of our body as the miraculous adaptation machine it is, it becomes clear that cardio isn’t the best long-term strategy for looking our best (which I’m going to say is somewhat lean and muscular). Your physiology doesn’t care about coming in shredded for Dante’s wedding in 2 months, it cares about survival. Holding onto fat is its means of doing that.?

Let’s stick with the Dante wedding example: If you were to go into the gym and do four 1-hour sessions of stationary biking a week, here’s how your body would adapt (these numbers are made up, but the principle still applies):

Monday: 400 calories burned

Tuesday: 360 burned

Thursday: 330 burned

Friday: 300 burned

What happened there? Your body got more efficient with the stimulus you were consistently giving it. The hour of biking on Monday burned 100 more calories than the hour on Friday. Continue this trend, and you’ll have to do more cardio, paired with greater caloric restriction, to continue the trend of weight loss.?

Lastly, the signal cardio sends to your body is not one to hold onto muscle (generally what gives people a physically attractive appearance). Why would our body want to grow a muscular butt or chest when we’re doing submaximal effort for extended periods of time (cardio)? While cardio can aid in weight loss due to its acute ability to burn calories, the type of weight loss may not be what we’re looking for, resulting in the dreaded “skinny fat” physique”.

Side note: Running is a skill - the majority of people should NOT start with this form of cardio!

It’s interesting that jogging has become a part of culture that is completely accepted as a means of losing weight. For most, it is the first form of cardio that comes to mind. I would much rather start someone going for walks, hopping on a bike, swimming in a pool, or pushing a sled.?

If you’ve been “off the wagon” for an extended period of time (let’s say six months or longer), and you hop right back into running, you are going to hurt. If you view a 3-mile jog as what it really is, that is thousands of single leg contacts absorbing 2 to 4 times your bodyweight of force EACH STEP, then it is no surprise that you wake up the next morning deathly sore. Your feet, ankles, calves, quads, hips, etc. are not ready for that! Going from a mainly sedentary life, with walking as the only form of activity you’re doing, to the intense stimulus jogging gives is a sure way to a stress fracture if you do it often enough (the 3-4 times a week commonly self-prescribed).?

If you absolutely want to start jogging, treat it as practice: Start with a half mile, then walk a half mile. Come back in a day or two, do a mile and walk a half mile, etc... This is a gradual progression, just like any other skill. Frequency is king here, not intensity. If you get four 2 mile runs in a week, the adaptations your body would see will be far better than if you did one 8-mile run. Your body adapts positively from stimulation, not annihilation.?

I’m not a running gait mechanics expert, but to put it simply: try and jog like a kid running around a pool: light, poppy, quick steps, ideally not slamming your heel into the ground. Set a metronome to 90bpm and run to it. This will keep you springy and is a great place to start for proper running technique.?

If you want to include cardio in your regimen (which I absolutely recommend for the health benefits and anti-depressant effects), start with walking. Seriously. Go for an hour walk a few times a week.?

-???????A better long-term strategy for body composition change

Lifting weights, or any other form of progressive resistance training (bodyweight, machines) is the most effective long-term, sustainable strategy for maintaining a physique you’re happy with. Building muscle, which is the adaptation proper resistance training gives, is a means of automatically boosting your metabolism, or how many calories you burn, AT REST, in a given day. Referring back to cardio’s adaptation of greater efficiency and less calorie burn over time, lifting gives the exact opposite effect.

Instead of your body getting more efficient over time (burning less calories), it gets LESS efficient with calories due to the muscle you’ve put on your body. While inefficiency doesn’t sound like a good thing, in the modern world of abundance, this is a superpower! Burning more calories at rest means a meal out with your friends won’t “stick to you” and keep you stuck in the cycle of losing and gaining weight.?

If you come in Monday and lift 100 pounds on some lift, then come in three days later and lift 105, continuing the trend for several months, think of the signal that sends to your brain... If your brain could speak like a human, here’s what it would say when exposed to resistance training: “Michelle seems to be recruiting more and more muscle fibers every week, and these weights are getting heavier... hey protein sitting around in the blood stream, go repair her quadricep muscles and make them grow back more muscular and toned than before. We have to be ready for the next set of front squats.”

That is how I would explain it to a fourth grader, and guess what? No matter how I communicate it, it still happens. Lifting weights builds muscle.?Muscle does not make you bulky. Muscle boosts your metabolism and, in the long term, facilitates healthy weight loss among a host of other health benefits.?

This DOES NOT mean you need to go in and start maxing out on bench press with the fellas on international chest day (MONDAYS BABY). If that’s your jam, go for it. If not, something as simple as 3-5 machines, for 3-5 sets of 8-20 reps, 2-3 times a week is absolutely wonderful. Try and hit a variety of muscle groups, and ensure you’re reaching an 8 out of 10 difficulty on the majority of your sets. This will put you on a great path to building your metabolism.?

Hit the DMs if you’re interested in online training. Talk soon and hope this helps.