Cardio is making you fat.
Do I have your attention?
Cardio is absolutely the wrong form of exercise for fat loss, especially with our modern lifestyle. The best insurance against modern life factors is to protect yourself with a faster metabolism. We need a metabolism that burns a lot of calories, even when we are sitting in front of our computers. Exercise, done correctly, can speed up your metabolism and burn fat readily. That type of exercise in not cardio.
Cardio makes you better at cardio. When you first start cardio training the activity is difficult and your body burns. Over time your body adapts to the stress and the exercise gets easier. Becoming adapted to cardio means using less energy while performing it. Your body adapts by sparing calories and breaking down muscle, and as a result the metabolic rate slows down due to muscle being sacrificed for energy. With consistent cardio your body becomes very efficient at storing more calories and better at burning fewer calories, thus slowing down your metabolism.
What is the best type of exercise for long-term fat loss?
Resistance training. Simpler terms—whatever builds muscle. Muscle is a metabolically active tissue, meaning your body burns a lot of calories just to maintain it. The more muscle you have, the more calories you can expend. Without sending the right signal to increase strength and gain more muscle your body will reduce muscle mass and won’t waste calories maintaining it—slowing down your metabolism.
With resistance training you build muscle and strength and increase your metabolic rate. With a faster metabolism you can eat more without gaining body fat, and can lose fat with less effort.
This is even more important when you are cutting calories to lose weight. Studies show that almost half of the weight people lose through dieting alone is muscle weight, resulting in a slower metabolism. When you cut calories your body will adapt and simply burn less. With muscle being energy expensive tissue the body will break it down first, resulting in a slower metabolism.
For a sustained, faster metabolism, resistance training is the best form of exercise and when paired with proper nutrition fat loss will result. Resistance training has so many more benefits— builds bone density and prevents osteoporosis, helps balance hormones, improves mobility, flexibility and helps with coordination.
Lift heavy and lift often!