Cardio vs Resistance Training for Fat Loss

If I was looking to quickly lose weight years ago, I’d automatically lean towards cardio and in many respects I’d be right to think that. Now I have never really needed to lose more than a stone in weight and that’s where it can all fall down. The same rules don’t apply to everyone because it all depends on YOUR specific goals and I would probably have advised someone trying to lose 4 stones that they should too look to increase their cardio output. Run, skip, do your burpees…burn that fat.

In reality, if that’s what your weekly training programme looks like you’ll constantly be chasing your tail unless you’re on a huge calorie deficit. Even then, it’s not a good long term way of maintaining fat loss, and remember, you’re not just losing body fat in that process…it’s muscle, too. How long can you sustain eating at that low calorie deficit? 1 bad calorie day in the week can offset an entire week of “eating well”.

Exercise is essentially the process of breaking down your body. You then rest to allow your body to re-adapt and work from a higher baseline…increasing size, speed, power etc. If you’re relying on cardio to lose fat, you will plateau faster because your body will learn to be more efficient in order to adapt to your behaviour…slowing down your metabolism, as the signal that you’re sending to the body is that building muscle is not a priority.

Alternatively, a good resistance training programme sends a strong muscle building signal to your body and there are so many more ways to progressively overload, which means that you won’t plateau anywhere nearly as quickly as you would in a high cardiovascular programme. Your metabolism increases which means you can eat a lot more and still lose weight as a pound of muscle burns over 5.5 times as much as fat does at rest. You won’t find that your weight drops as rapidly as you would on a high cardiovascular programme as you lose weight and build muscle simultaneously, but you will keep your energy levels up and feel/look a lot healthier as you do so. 

The more muscle mass you add at the expense of body fat, the quicker and more efficient the body will respond. And you don’t have to starve yourself in the process.