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Strength or Cardio For Fat Loss?

Oct 07, 2018

Today’s post is inspired by our Instagram poll yesterday where it became clear not everyone is on the weight training band wagon. Although a clear majority of you believe that weight training is more important for fat loss than cardio, some of you wanted more answers! And bless your little hearts by the way, for those of you cardio lovers out there…hats off to you! Most of us dread the thought of hitting the dreadmill…..er…..sorry treadmill. Personally, the thought of getting to the gym to pump some iron is far more appealing than a monster cardio sweat sesh. But I digress….

So is weight training more important for fat loss?

Definitely gave a spoiler alert on my Instagram stories last night, but the most important consideration for fat loss is…….drum roll………..DIET! There is no way to ‘out train’ a bad diet. Ok that was a cliche, but it’s true. Without a caloric deficit, you are literally running in circles trying to lose fat. Abs are made in the kitchen. OK! I’m done. Those statements are irritatingly effective at getting the point across though.

Let’s pause and talk about fat loss for a moment. What most people want when they say fat loss is actually a change in body composition. The number on the scale seems all important in the beginning. Most of us have an idea of the perfect # for our gender and height. However, not only is this number mostly irrelevant…..it’s totally irrelevant. I feel strongly about this one. Two people at the same weight can look drastically different from one another. The reason is, they have different body compositions. How you look is largely defined by the ratio of your fat mass to your lean tissue mass. Folks with higher lean tissue mass look leaner. That’s because lean tissue is more dense, aka takes up less space than fat issue. I hate to say it but the term ‘skinny fat’ is a good example describing someone who doesn’t weigh much but doesn’t look fit. They are mostly squish and very little hard AF. Keeping it PG here folks.

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So you want to lose weight? No I say! You want to lose fat and build muscle! You want to look different, you want to fit into your clothes, you want some definition in your legs, arms, and midsection, you want to feel better, and guess what? When you get to that point, it doesn’t matter WHAT the scale says because you achieved your real goals. Whether those goals were achieved at 120lbs, 160lbs, or 190lbs it really won’t matter. Trust me on this.

SO, if your goal is to change your body composition what should you do? FIRST and most importantly is to create a caloric deficit and sustain it over time. Sorry folks there are no short cuts, the best thing you can do to create real, meaningful change in your body composition is to be consistent. Consistent effort, consistent practice = consistent results. To create a caloric deficit you want to do two things:

1) Decrease your intake

2) Increase your output

Decreasing your intake means creating a modest (10-20%) reduction in what you are consuming every day. We won’t get into the details in today’s post but if you have questions about step #1, I am happy to do a more detailed post on the best ways to decrease your intake in a healthy and sustainable way. Let me know if that is some needed reading by leaving a comment or shooting me a DM on Instagram. Today, we are focusing on step #2…..increasing your output.

If you guessed exercise as the best way to increase your output, you would be correct. However, the ultimate goal is to increase your caloric expenditure not only during exercise but at rest as well! To accomplish this goal we need to increase your resting metabolic rate, aka the amount of energy your body consumes at rest. How do we accomplish this you ask? By increasing the amount of active tissue we have……aka muscle tissue! Muscle is metabolically active meaning it consumes energy even at rest. Fat tissue does not. What do you know! We are back to the concept of changing body composition! We want more muscle and less fat to raise our resting metabolic rate. Would I be Captain Obvious if I said the best way to increase muscle mass is to lift weights? Probably. At this point in the article you are thinking great, question answered: lifting weights is more important than cardio for fat loss. But wait! There’s more….

Did you know that the type of exercise you perform influences your energy expenditure for the rest of the day? As mentioned above, we care about two things: calories burned during exercise and those burned at rest. Steady state cardio (aka moderate intensity walking, running, cycling etc. performed for a continuous period of time) tends to burn a significant # of calories more than either weight lifting or high intensity metabolic conditioning during exercise. HOWEVER, the increased caloric expenditure from steady state cardio stops there….aka as soon as you are done your session and your breathing goes back to normal your body resumes its normal metabolic rate. Following a heavy resistance training session or high intensity metabolic conditioning, your body’s need for oxygen remains elevated for a 24h period. Meaning your metabolic rate is raised for the rest of the day! This is a very good thing.

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Acutely, both resistance training and high intensity interval training have profound effects on energy expenditure (step #2 of our fat loss plan). However, over the long term, consistent heavy resistance training will increase your lean tissue mass ultimately resulting in an increased resting metabolic rate. This is where the money is. More metabolically active tissue means you burn more calories than the average bear while sitting at your desk. Not only that, but the change in body composition you will experience will have you looking leaner and more defined. Remember we said muscle literally takes up less space than fat? That means you will too. Increasing your dense muscle tissue will have you fitting into smaller clothes even though you may weigh more than before! Suddenly the # on the scale becomes irrelevant because you achieved your primary goal of looking and feeling better.

To reiterate: the most important factor for fat loss is a consistent caloric deficit over time. The second most important factor is to increase your daily energy expenditure both during activity and at rest. This is achieved through heavy resistance training and high intensity metabolic conditioning.

Ultimately you will experience some kind of plateau where our bulletproof plan takes a bullet and you stop seeing results. The perfect exercise program will be both structured and variable to keep your body from adapting to a certain stimulus. What does this mean? It means you can’t lift heavy and run sprints day after day, you need to mix in lighter resistance days and moderate intensity cardio days (sigh). If the sound of this much planning and effort turns you off, I highly recommend finding a trainer you trust to put a structured program together for you. We take the guesswork out of the equation, customizing a plan to best suit your needs. If you are interested in private training please email me: [email protected], I work with all ages and ability levels meeting you where you are to get you where you want to go.

That’s all for now. As always, if you have any burning questions you’d like answered in a blog post let me know! Really appreciate you spending some time with me today.

Coach P

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