Why we don’ t do long boring cardio for fat loss
Nearly everybody that tries to lose weight will try 1 of 3 things.
Jogging
A gym programme that they follow for months on end
Some sort of Group Exercise Aerobics/ Dance style class
Now, before I go any further I have nothing at all against any of these, they have several uses, i.e. enhanced heart and lung function, improvements in joint health, marathon preparation and increased well being. But in terms of Fat Loss and Toning you’ll have a better chance winning the lottery!
Let’s get one thing clear, right now. The ONLY tissue in the body that will burn fat and speed up your metabolism is muscle. FACT. Now whilst the above activities referred to as; aerobic training, get your heart going faster and make you sweat, they do absolutely nothing to even maintain muscle, let alone stimulate it. In fact they often result in you losing muscle and therefore slowing down the rate at which you burn fat and metabolise food. Aerobic training- meaning training under the presence of oxygen- has been shown to significantly raise the body’s levels of Cortisol, this is a hormone that breaks down muscle tissue and contributes to you storing more body fat around you’re stomach!
If that isn’t enough for you, long term aerobic training will end up turning your body into an efficient fat burning machine. Don’t get excited, imagine your car is an efficient fuel burning machine- you use less fuel. In essence you get better at keeping hold of more Fat!
So why is there so much confusing stuff out there surrounding this. Mostly people assume long distance runners to be really skinny. Ok lets use this example, yes Long distance Athletes are very skinny, however they are NOT lean and have very little amounts of muscle tissue and even these athletes at this superior level still have around 11% body fat, may I add that they probably run in excess of 20 hours per week! Remember they’ve made their bodies efficient at using less fat for exercise. Now let us compare this long distance runner to a sprinter, who has body fat of around 6% and probably never runs for more than a minute at a time!
In the real world people with large amounts of body fat can train, complete and do well at MARATHONS (never mind small jogs) and still not lose much body fat. Take Eddie Izzard as living proof of this, he completed 43 marathons in 51 days!! This was a magnificent achievement and made the nation proud. However it didn’t get shot of his beer gut!
Another one of the major problems you get from this steady cardio, jogging and aerobics is that yes, ok, it does burn a few calories (not great deal of them) however your body stops burning calories almost immediately after you have finished. This means you get no return on the work that you have put into it. Not the best when your slogging your guts out in the back of some sweaty room or on the side of some dark road is it?
In comparison, when we use intense exercise that also stimulates muscle not only do we burn several calories whilst performing the exercise, we continue to burn calories after. This is due to an effect scientists call EPOC (excess post exercise oxygen consumption) ok that’s a mouthful but what it means is you can keep burning fat for up to 36 hours after exercise, pretty handy if you don’t have much time to spend training. Not to mention the fact that for every 1lb of lean muscle we gain we rev our metabolism up to be burning an extra 50 calories a day just being sedentary and still!
So then surely, the most efficient way of achieving fat loss and becoming toned, would be to use exercise that stimulates muscle and creates EPOC???
No question! Fat Loss will only be achieved quickly by using resistance training involving large movements (that stimulate lots of muscles) performed at high intensities. You must look to work the whole body, and only use cardio if it involves working absolutely as hard as you can, for very short intervals followed by of course short rest periods. In other words, you have to take the all out attack approach and make your training sessions short, sharp and hard.
If your goal is to lose fat or get toned this year make sure you go the right way about it as several won’t. And they still look the same the following year! OR worse!
