Question of the Day

Someone was told that 45 minutes, 5 days a week was the key to more rapid weight loss. Is this true? The answers is ... yes and no.
Cardio is certainly a great activity to add for weight loss. Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation about cardio. Because cardio burns a larger percentage of calories from fat, most people mistakenly believe it is the key to fat loss. Unfortunately, this couldn't be farther from the truth. Cardio does burn a higher percentage of calories from fat, but it's weight training that will burn more calories overall and have a greater impact on your metabolism.

So what is the deal with adding cardio to increase fat loss?

First, understand that during weight loss, your body is constantly trying to "stay the same," a process referred to as homeostasis. In so doing, it will adjust to match your exercise and nutrition level. One strategy to continue to shed fat is to reduce your calories over time. Of course, eventually calories will become so low you'll hinder your progress by keeping your body from being able to recover from your workouts. This can lead to injury, overtraining, and even cause you to gain fat despite eating fewer calories than before! (One strategy to avoid this is referred to as zigzagging calories. To learn more, read Burning Fat: A Technical Guide.

So what about cardio? You can't add too much weight training because you'd eventually do more harm than good. You also shouldn't add high volumes of high intensity cardio or you'll suffer as well.

Low intensity cardio has a few benefits. It burns a higher percentage of calories from fat. While it burns fewer calories overall, if you have the time, it can burn significant calories over longer sessions. Most important, however, is that low intensity cardio is easy to recover from. While adding sprints or weight workouts may eventually lead to overtraining, you can safely add fairly significant volumes of low intensity cardio and still keep your sanity and health intact.

So what is the best strategy? Honestly, it's not 45 minutes, 5 times per week. It's more. Huh?

If I want to lose fat, I'll start out with three easy high intensity interval sessions per week. They're fast, fun, and burn a lot of calories.

The second week, I'll add 5 minutes of walking on a maximum incline after my twenty minute HIIT session. Now I'm doing 25 minutes total, 3x per week.

I add 5 minutes per session per week, until I hit around 45 - 60 minutes per session.

Then I add some sessions on my off days.

I eventually end up doing the cardio 5 or 6 days out of the week, but if I were to suddenly start that early in the program, not only would I burn out, but I'd burn up my chance of losing fat. My metabolism would crash, I'd lose muscle mass, and then when my body adpted to the volume of training, I'd have nowhere to go.

This is why a combined strategy of staggering calories while slowly increasing the intensity and duration of your training sessions is the key, as I describe in the video, Achieve Low Body Fat.

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