Cardio vs. Weight Training for Fat Loss: What Actually Matters

revolutionizenj

Sep 8

4 min read

If your goal is to lose body fat, should you be doing more cardio or lifting more weights?

It sounds like a simple question.

Cardio burns calories. Weight training builds muscle. So if you want to lose weight, just do a ton of cardio... right?

NO. Not exactly.

The truth is that both can play an important role in fat loss, but they do very different things.

And neither one is going to make up for a nutrition plan that consistently has you eating more calories than you're burning.

First, Fat Loss Still Comes Down to a Calorie Deficit

You can have the greatest training program in the world, but if you're consistently eating more energy than you're using, you're going to have a hard time losing body fat.

That's why nutrition usually does the heavy lifting when we're trying to create a sustainable calorie deficit.

Exercise helps.

It can increase energy expenditure, improve health, help preserve muscle and completely change what your body looks like as you lose weight.

But trying to exercise your way out of consistently overeating is usually a losing battle.

So Where Does Cardio Fit In?

Cardio is a useful tool for increasing calorie expenditure.

Walking, biking, running, the stair climber, elliptical, swimming, classes, sports. There are plenty of ways to do it.

And you don't necessarily need to destroy yourself doing HIIT every day.

Something as simple as increasing your daily steps and elevating your heart rate can make a meaningful difference in how much energy you expend over the course of a week.

Cardio is also incredibly valuable for cardiovascular health, conditioning and work capacity.

The mistake is thinking that because cardio burns calories while you're doing it, more cardio must always equal more fat loss.

At some point, piling on more and more cardio can become difficult to recover from, interfere with training, increase fatigue and potentially make you hungrier.

Cardio is a tool.

You don't need to turn it into a punishment for eating.

What About Weight Training?

Weight training has a different job.

When you're losing weight, the goal shouldn't just be to make the number on the scale smaller.

We want as much of that weight loss as possible to come from body fat while preserving muscle.

That's where resistance training becomes extremely important.

Your body needs a reason to hold onto muscle while you're dieting.

Lifting weights gives it one.

And this is where two people who lose the exact same amount of weight can end up looking completely different.

Losing 20 pounds while maintaining muscle is very different from losing 20 pounds that includes a significant amount of muscle.

If your goal is to look leaner, more athletic, more defined or simply improve your body composition, maintaining muscle matters.

This is also why strength training is so important while using a GLP-1!!!

But Doesn't Muscle Speed Up Your Metabolism?

Yes, muscle is metabolically active tissue.

But this gets exaggerated quite a bit in fitness marketing.

Adding a few pounds of muscle isn't suddenly going to allow you to eat thousands of extra calories every week without gaining weight.

That's not the reason I would tell someone to strength train during a fat-loss phase.

The bigger reason is body composition.

We don't just want you lighter.

We want to improve the ratio of muscle to body fat.

Which One Burns More Calories?

During the actual workout, cardio will often burn more calories than traditional weight training performed for the same amount of time. ** (I am going to circle back to this)

And that's perfectly fine.

It doesn't make cardio “better.”

You're looking at one small piece of the picture.

If you spend months dieting without resistance training and lose muscle along the way, getting lighter isn't necessarily going to give you the result you pictured when you started.

This is why we don't choose exercise based solely on whatever burns the most calories in 45 minutes.

** KEEP IN MIND - INTENSITY. It is not guaranteed you will burn more calories performing cardio over strength training in the same amount of time. YOUR INTENSITY MATTERS. A low intensity stroll for 30 minutes at 90 BPM heart rate will certainly burn less calories than a high intensity strength training session with minimal breaks at 140 BPM heart rate.

So Which Should You Do?

For most people trying to lose body fat, I don't think the answer is cardio OR weight training.

It's probably some combination of both.

Use your nutrition to create a manageable calorie deficit.

Strength train consistently to maintain or build muscle.

Stay active throughout the day.

Use cardio strategically to increase energy expenditure and improve cardiovascular fitness.

And make sure you're recovering enough to actually sustain all of it.

You don't need two-hour workouts.

You don't need cardio seven days a week.

You don't need to leave every workout lying on the floor in a puddle of sweat.

And you definitely don't need to earn your food through exercise.

What Actually Matters?

Fat loss isn't about finding the exercise that burns the most calories.

It's about putting together a plan you can repeat long enough to actually get somewhere.

Nutrition controls your calorie intake.

Cardio can help increase your calorie expenditure.

Weight training helps you maintain the muscle that gives your body shape.

Daily activity keeps you moving outside of the gym.

Recovery allows you to keep doing all of it.

Don't think about cardio and weights as competitors.

Give each one a job.

Then build your plan around the bigger goal: lose body fat while keeping as much muscle as possible.

That's a much better goal than simply trying to make the scale go down.