When most people think of burning fat through exercise the first form of exercise that always comes to mind is cardio. It’s almost naturally assumed that a cardio workout will be the most efficient way to burn more fat. So is cardio really the best form of exercise for fat loss? What is the best form of cardio for fat loss? And how often should we be doing those cardio exercises for the most amount of fat loss? I’m going to answer all these questions in today’s video and I think you’re going to be really surprised with some of these answers. Let’s start first with if cardio is the most effective way to burn fat. Cardio believes it or not is not in any way shape or form directly linked to burning fat. What I mean by this is that when you hop on the treadmill and do half an hour 45 minutes an hour or even an hour and a half of cardio it doesn’t at all guarantee that you’re going to burn any fat. In reality, cardio is linked to burning extra calories. Just because you’re burning calories doesn’t mean that you’re burning fat. As I always say we need to create a calorie deficit to burn fat. Even after burning 500 600 or even let’s say a thousand calories during a cardio session we can easily eat way more calories later in the day and completely negate the effect of cardio. So to answer the question about whether cardio is the best form of exercise for fat loss the answer is it depends. If you add cardio to your workout and you continue keeping your diet clean and low in calories then doing that cardio could definitely speed up your fat loss results. On the other hand, if you run for half an hour burn 400 calories and then get really hungry after and eat like a ravenous animal you’ll probably end up taking those 400 calories right back in if not more. In this situation, it would probably be better for you to just not do cardio and to skip out on all those extra calories. Another example is if you do 30 minutes of running and you compare it to 30-minute weight training circuits. The 30 minutes of running might even burn more calories than a slow-paced weight training circuit, however, lifting weights has shown to continue burning calories long after you’re done. As you can see when comparing these two once again it depends which one will burn more overall calories. Realistically it doesn’t matter at all which one burns the most calories during the workout.

What really matters and determines if you burn fat is if your able to create an overall calorie deficit or not. Cardio can be a tool to help create a larger calorie deficit however cardio workout itself will never directly burn fat without that deficit. It’s all about our total daily energy expenditure versus our total daily caloric intake. To decide which form of cardio is best 4 our fat loss there are a lot of things to consider. For example, does the cardio just burn calories during the workout or does it continue burning calories afterward? Does that form of cardio stimulate your hunger response and make you eat like crazy afterward or does it give you a chance to burn some extra calories without taking them right back in? How long are you able to do that specific cardio exercise before throwing in the towel and going home? How long do you want to be doing cardio for? Short sessions? Long sessions? How intense of a cardio workout can you handle? Let me give you some examples to help drive home my point. Running will burn roughly 300 calories per half-hour while walking will burn 300 to 400 calories an hour. If you hate running to the point where you can’t stand doing it for longer than half an hour you might be better off just going out for an hour-long walk especially if you enjoy it. Take your dog for a brisk walk it counts as cardio. Then there’s also cardio workouts that burn a lot more calories like a jumping rope which can burn up to a thousand calories an hour. Meaning if you do this for 15-20 minutes you’ll be able to burn roughly the same amount of calories that you burn in 30 minutes of running. And there are individual benefits to each form of cardio. Almost All forms of cardio will make you breathe heavier helping you detoxify through your lungs and will make you sweat. again this is another form of naturally detoxifying your body. But then running, for example, will increase the endurance in your legs. Whereas rowing and swimming will help increase endurance in your upper body a lot more.

Check out my client Stephanie’s transformation where he lost a whole bunch of fat.