Do I really have to do cardio lose weight?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Isn't HIIT cardio & strength combined? I thought just about anything that raises your heart rate (ie. get breathless) is cardio.

one is aerobic the other is anaerobic.

[Anonymous]

I hate cardio too but have found a kickboxing program that I really enjoy. Not in the DC area, but I bet you could find something similar.

http://extremebodyshaping.com

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

there is no quick fix, this isn't a reality tv show, for the OP to drop the 30 lbs and do it properly so they look like normal and not a bag of bones with skin hanging off them it should take about a year.

Why so dogmatic? I've lost 15 in 2 months with mainly diet and lifting. 30 lbs should be 4 months - 6 months tops.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

there is no quick fix, this isn't a reality tv show, for the OP to drop the 30 lbs and do it properly so they look like normal and not a bag of bones with skin hanging off them it should take about a year.

Why so dogmatic? I've lost 15 in 2 months with mainly diet and lifting. 30 lbs should be 4 months - 6 months tops.

+1

An interesting thing I've noticed? If a person says "You are 100% wrong." or anything along the lines of "Here is the answer. Period." you can almost always feel comfortable disregarding their opinion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. You don't need to do cardio to lose weight. If your primary goal is to lose weight, dieting is by far the most important, followed by strength training and/or high intensity interval training. Cardio is a distant third.

To be clear, there are plenty of other excellent reasons to do cardio, such as heart health and general energy level. But people tend to massively overstate its importance for weight loss.

You are 100% wrong. The lose fat, and I assume she wants to lose fat, you have to burn it, the only way to burn fat (reduce the size of the fat cells) is to do via cardio. Limiting food (calories) will reduce lean body mass which is what you want not to get rid of.

If a person is working out properly and at a high enough level to burn fat they will actually increase their caloric intake due to the need to fuel their body. resistance weight training is a key component as well as a diet.

there is no quick fix, this isn't a reality tv show, for the OP to drop the 30 lbs and do it properly so they look like normal and not a bag of bones with skin hanging off them it should take about a year.

No, I'm really not. There is a wealth of recent research into these questions, and I think it amply supports this position.

First, despite the various fad diets, hate on carbs, etc., weight loss and gain is almost solely a function of caloric deficit or excess. By far the easiest way to create a caloric deficit is to diet. It is much easier to cut out an indulgent dessert, for example, than to have several extra exercise sessions. And that's assuming the extra exercise sessions don't cause you to eat more to compensate, when studies routinely show that they do.

Second, your sentence: "The lose fat, and I assume she wants to lose fat, you have to burn it, the only way to burn fat (reduce the size of the fat cells) is to do via cardio" is wrong in almost every single particular. "Burning fat" is a borderline nonsensical concept that has no foundation in physiology. Your body does convert fat into energy, but it does this regardless of the reason you have a caloric deficit. In fact, cardio is one of the least effective ways to "burn fat," because fat, though it has more calories per gram, takes more time and energy to digest. When you are resting, you are converting a combination of the various macro-nutrients (protein, carbs, fat) into energy. When you elevate your heart rate, your body skews towards digesting the most digestible form of energy - carbohydrates. That means a lower percentage of the calories your body "burns" are fat than when you are not exercising. Finally, the notion that "the only way" to burn fat is cardio is entirely wrong. The vast majority of calories you burn during the day, including fat calories, you burn just from being awake. Taking a breath burns calories. Digesting food burns calories. Using your brain burns calories. And again, these calories come from a combination of the various micronutrients, and are actually more likely to come from fat sources when you are resting. (It is of course true that you will burn more calories if you are doing cardio then if you spend the same time sitting in front of a computer. But 30 minutes at moderate exertion on the elliptical might increase your net caloric deficit by 5% for that day. Beneficial, yes. But less than the effect of watching what you eat.)

Third, you are correct that limiting food intake can reduce muscle. That's problematic for weight loss, because muscle helps keep weight off (because it takes a lot of calories to sustain muscle, helping to keep your caloric balance in check). But limiting food intake also reduces fat stores. The trick here is figuring out how to make sure more of your weight loss comes from reduced fat than reduced muscle, and the science on this is very clear: weight training and HIIT help preserve or increase muscle mass. Cardio does not, and in fact can make it more difficult to retain muscle mass. That means if your primary goal is weight loss, you want to run a caloric deficit through dieting and work to minimize muscle loss through strength training and HIIT.

Fourth, I'm not sure I understand your sentence: "If a person is working out properly and at a high enough level to burn fat they will actually increase their caloric intake due to the need to fuel their body." I think maybe you meant to say increase their "caloric needs" or "caloric deficit?" Again, you don't need a minimum intensity level to burn fat. That's actually backwards. The more you spike your intensity level, the more your body will attempt to digest carbohydrates instead of fat. In any case, cardio isn't the best way to spike an increase in caloric need. Your metabolism does peak for a short period after engaging in cardio exercise. Some studies say it stays elevated for 30-90 minutes. But it peaks for even longer after strength training or HIIT, with some studies showing an elevated metabolism for a day or more. If you have limited time to exercise, you will get a significantly larger weight loss benefit from strength training than cardio.

Again, I'm not anti cardio. I just think dieting and weight training/HIIT are both significantly more important for weight loss.

[Anonymous]

Fourth, I'm not sure I understand your sentence: "If a person is working out properly and at a high enough level to burn fat they will actually increase their caloric intake due to the need to fuel their body." I think maybe you meant to say increase their "caloric needs" or "caloric deficit?" Again, you don't need a minimum intensity level to burn fat. That's actually backwards. The more you spike your intensity level, the more your body will attempt to digest carbohydrates instead of fat. In any case, cardio isn't the best way to spike an increase in caloric need. Your metabolism does peak for a short period after engaging in cardio exercise. Some studies say it stays elevated for 30-90 minutes. But it peaks for even longer after strength training or HIIT, with some studies showing an elevated metabolism for a day or more. If you have limited time to exercise, you will get a significantly larger weight loss benefit from strength training than cardio.

Again, I'm not anti cardio. I just think dieting and weight training/HIIT are both significantly more important for weight loss.

you do not need to run a caloric deficit to loose weight. most people have no idea that when the loose weight, they are loosing lean body mass due to the fact they are not exercising. You are born with a certain # of fat cells, unless you are active or have a high metabolism your fat cells will increase in size. Think of a bubble getting larger. To reduce them, your body needs to "burn " the fat, it isn't actually burring it but it is reducing the size of the fat cells. For your body to get to that point you need to be doing a minimum # of aerobic exercise where your heart rate is at least 80 of your max hr. until you are at that level, and most people do not reach that level because they think 30 minutes is enough you are not doing anything -there I agree but if you are working out properly, and once your heart rate is up and stays up for at least 30 minutes above the80% you will start to reduce the fat cells.

dieting is a marketing tool, most of us trainers encourage our clients to eat more healthy and more of it because it isn't the good high quality foods that are making them fat.

[Anonymous]

I'm not OP but someone very interested in this topic. After reading all these posts by people who seem to know what they're talking about, I'm more confused than ever. So do you need cardio or not? Or is it sufficient to do HIIT & strength w/ diet and be perfectly healthy & lose weight? Is the cardio in HIIT sufficient? This other person on this thread seems to be saying that 30 min of cardio is not enough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Fourth, I'm not sure I understand your sentence: "If a person is working out properly and at a high enough level to burn fat they will actually increase their caloric intake due to the need to fuel their body." I think maybe you meant to say increase their "caloric needs" or "caloric deficit?" Again, you don't need a minimum intensity level to burn fat. That's actually backwards. The more you spike your intensity level, the more your body will attempt to digest carbohydrates instead of fat. In any case, cardio isn't the best way to spike an increase in caloric need. Your metabolism does peak for a short period after engaging in cardio exercise. Some studies say it stays elevated for 30-90 minutes. But it peaks for even longer after strength training or HIIT, with some studies showing an elevated metabolism for a day or more. If you have limited time to exercise, you will get a significantly larger weight loss benefit from strength training than cardio.

Again, I'm not anti cardio. I just think dieting and weight training/HIIT are both significantly more important for weight loss.

you do not need to run a caloric deficit to loose weight. most people have no idea that when the loose weight, they are loosing lean body mass due to the fact they are not exercising. You are born with a certain # of fat cells, unless you are active or have a high metabolism your fat cells will increase in size. Think of a bubble getting larger. To reduce them, your body needs to "burn " the fat, it isn't actually burring it but it is reducing the size of the fat cells. For your body to get to that point you need to be doing a minimum # of aerobic exercise where your heart rate is at least 80 of your max hr. until you are at that level, and most people do not reach that level because they think 30 minutes is enough you are not doing anything -there I agree but if you are working out properly, and once your heart rate is up and stays up for at least 30 minutes above the80% you will start to reduce the fat cells.

dieting is a marketing tool, most of us trainers encourage our clients to eat more healthy and more of it because it isn't the good high quality foods that are making them fat.

This is just not true. And if you're a trainer, you should probably know how to spell lose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Fourth, I'm not sure I understand your sentence: "If a person is working out properly and at a high enough level to burn fat they will actually increase their caloric intake due to the need to fuel their body." I think maybe you meant to say increase their "caloric needs" or "caloric deficit?" Again, you don't need a minimum intensity level to burn fat. That's actually backwards. The more you spike your intensity level, the more your body will attempt to digest carbohydrates instead of fat. In any case, cardio isn't the best way to spike an increase in caloric need. Your metabolism does peak for a short period after engaging in cardio exercise. Some studies say it stays elevated for 30-90 minutes. But it peaks for even longer after strength training or HIIT, with some studies showing an elevated metabolism for a day or more. If you have limited time to exercise, you will get a significantly larger weight loss benefit from strength training than cardio.

Again, I'm not anti cardio. I just think dieting and weight training/HIIT are both significantly more important for weight loss.

you do not need to run a caloric deficit to loose weight. most people have no idea that when the loose weight, they are loosing lean body mass due to the fact they are not exercising. You are born with a certain # of fat cells, unless you are active or have a high metabolism your fat cells will increase in size. Think of a bubble getting larger. To reduce them, your body needs to "burn " the fat, it isn't actually burring it but it is reducing the size of the fat cells. For your body to get to that point you need to be doing a minimum # of aerobic exercise where your heart rate is at least 80 of your max hr. until you are at that level, and most people do not reach that level because they think 30 minutes is enough you are not doing anything -there I agree but if you are working out properly, and once your heart rate is up and stays up for at least 30 minutes above the80% you will start to reduce the fat cells.

dieting is a marketing tool, most of us trainers encourage our clients to eat more healthy and more of it because it isn't the good high quality foods that are making them fat.

Look, I guess there's really no more point in us debating this. The claims: "you do not need to run a caloric deficit to loose weight" and "For your body to get to that point you need to be doing a minimum # of aerobic exercise where your heart rate is at least 80 of your max hr" are simply false claims about physiology that have no support in science. I am clearly not going to convince you, but I hope anyone who is reading the thread and is actually interested in these issues are aware that what you are saying is not evidence-based and is not supported by academic literature.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not OP but someone very interested in this topic. After reading all these posts by people who seem to know what they're talking about, I'm more confused than ever. So do you need cardio or not? Or is it sufficient to do HIIT & strength w/ diet and be perfectly healthy & lose weight? Is the cardio in HIIT sufficient? This other person on this thread seems to be saying that 30 min of cardio is not enough.

No, you don't need to do cardio to lose weight. You need a calorie deficit. That is all. The easiest way to do that is to eat less.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. You don't need to do cardio to lose weight. If your primary goal is to lose weight, dieting is by far the most important, followed by strength training and/or high intensity interval training. Cardio is a distant third.

To be clear, there are plenty of other excellent reasons to do cardio, such as heart health and general energy level. But people tend to massively overstate its importance for weight loss.

You are 100% wrong. The lose fat, and I assume she wants to lose fat, you have to burn it, the only way to burn fat (reduce the size of the fat cells) is to do via cardio. Limiting food (calories) will reduce lean body mass which is what you want not to get rid of.

If a person is working out properly and at a high enough level to burn fat they will actually increase their caloric intake due to the need to fuel their body. resistance weight training is a key component as well as a diet.

there is no quick fix, this isn't a reality tv show, for the OP to drop the 30 lbs and do it properly so they look like normal and not a bag of bones with skin hanging off them it should take about a year.

No, I'm really not. There is a wealth of recent research into these questions, and I think it amply supports this position.

First, despite the various fad diets, hate on carbs, etc., weight loss and gain is almost solely a function of caloric deficit or excess. By far the easiest way to create a caloric deficit is to diet. It is much easier to cut out an indulgent dessert, for example, than to have several extra exercise sessions. And that's assuming the extra exercise sessions don't cause you to eat more to compensate, when studies routinely show that they do.

Second, your sentence: "The lose fat, and I assume she wants to lose fat, you have to burn it, the only way to burn fat (reduce the size of the fat cells) is to do via cardio" is wrong in almost every single particular. "Burning fat" is a borderline nonsensical concept that has no foundation in physiology. Your body does convert fat into energy, but it does this regardless of the reason you have a caloric deficit. In fact, cardio is one of the least effective ways to "burn fat," because fat, though it has more calories per gram, takes more time and energy to digest. When you are resting, you are converting a combination of the various macro-nutrients (protein, carbs, fat) into energy. When you elevate your heart rate, your body skews towards digesting the most digestible form of energy - carbohydrates. That means a lower percentage of the calories your body "burns" are fat than when you are not exercising. Finally, the notion that "the only way" to burn fat is cardio is entirely wrong. The vast majority of calories you burn during the day, including fat calories, you burn just from being awake. Taking a breath burns calories. Digesting food burns calories. Using your brain burns calories. And again, these calories come from a combination of the various micronutrients, and are actually more likely to come from fat sources when you are resting. (It is of course true that you will burn more calories if you are doing cardio then if you spend the same time sitting in front of a computer. But 30 minutes at moderate exertion on the elliptical might increase your net caloric deficit by 5% for that day. Beneficial, yes. But less than the effect of watching what you eat.)

Third, you are correct that limiting food intake can reduce muscle. That's problematic for weight loss, because muscle helps keep weight off (because it takes a lot of calories to sustain muscle, helping to keep your caloric balance in check). But limiting food intake also reduces fat stores. The trick here is figuring out how to make sure more of your weight loss comes from reduced fat than reduced muscle, and the science on this is very clear: weight training and HIIT help preserve or increase muscle mass. Cardio does not, and in fact can make it more difficult to retain muscle mass. That means if your primary goal is weight loss, you want to run a caloric deficit through dieting and work to minimize muscle loss through strength training and HIIT.

Fourth, I'm not sure I understand your sentence: "If a person is working out properly and at a high enough level to burn fat they will actually increase their caloric intake due to the need to fuel their body." I think maybe you meant to say increase their "caloric needs" or "caloric deficit?" Again, you don't need a minimum intensity level to burn fat. That's actually backwards. The more you spike your intensity level, the more your body will attempt to digest carbohydrates instead of fat. In any case, cardio isn't the best way to spike an increase in caloric need. Your metabolism does peak for a short period after engaging in cardio exercise. Some studies say it stays elevated for 30-90 minutes. But it peaks for even longer after strength training or HIIT, with some studies showing an elevated metabolism for a day or more. If you have limited time to exercise, you will get a significantly larger weight loss benefit from strength training than cardio.

Again, I'm not anti cardio. I just think dieting and weight training/HIIT are both significantly more important for weight loss.

This poster knows what he is talking about.

Cardio / aerobic exercise is absolutely good for you, but not necessary for weight loss.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

you do not need to run a caloric deficit to loose weight. most people have no idea that when the loose weight, they are loosing lean body mass due to the fact they are not exercising. You are born with a certain # of fat cells, unless you are active or have a high metabolism your fat cells will increase in size. Think of a bubble getting larger. To reduce them, your body needs to "burn " the fat, it isn't actually burring it but it is reducing the size of the fat cells. For your body to get to that point you need to be doing a minimum # of aerobic exercise where your heart rate is at least 80 of your max hr. until you are at that level, and most people do not reach that level because they think 30 minutes is enough you are not doing anything -there I agree but if you are working out properly, and once your heart rate is up and stays up for at least 30 minutes above the80% you will start to reduce the fat cells.

dieting is a marketing tool, most of us trainers encourage our clients to eat more healthy and more of it because it isn't the good high quality foods that are making them fat.

You badly misunderstand the rudiments of basic human physiology.

As my favorite professor once admonished me many years ago, "If you don't know the facts, we can't even have the discussion."

I hope you are not "training" people to do anything important.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not OP but someone very interested in this topic. After reading all these posts by people who seem to know what they're talking about, I'm more confused than ever. So do you need cardio or not? Or is it sufficient to do HIIT & strength w/ diet and be perfectly healthy & lose weight? Is the cardio in HIIT sufficient? This other person on this thread seems to be saying that 30 min of cardio is not enough.

My take is that the person who is claiming 30 minutes is not enough, while apparently a professional trainer, is convinced of "facts" about physiology that are simply false, and so I would not trust that person's conclusions. To lose weight, you should cut how much you eat while simultaneously trying to preserve as much muscle mass as possible, through strength training or HIIT. Cardio can be a helpful component of a weight loss program because it will further increase your caloric deficit, but it is less important than the other two for weight loss.

Your question about whether you can be "perfectly healthy" without cardio is a slightly different question. Cardio improves your cardiovascular health, and so it is a good thing to do, especially if you have other risk factors associated with heart attacks, even if you're not trying to lose weight. There is an increasing body of evidence that HIIT might produce the same cardiovascular health benefits as traditional cardio, but this is an emerging area of research, so I think it is premature to say that HIIT is a complete substitute for cardio for heart health.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not OP but someone very interested in this topic. After reading all these posts by people who seem to know what they're talking about, I'm more confused than ever. So do you need cardio or not? Or is it sufficient to do HIIT & strength w/ diet and be perfectly healthy & lose weight? Is the cardio in HIIT sufficient? This other person on this thread seems to be saying that 30 min of cardio is not enough.

My take is that the person who is claiming 30 minutes is not enough, while apparently a professional trainer, is convinced of "facts" about physiology that are simply false, and so I would not trust that person's conclusions. To lose weight, you should cut how much you eat while simultaneously trying to preserve as much muscle mass as possible, through strength training or HIIT. Cardio can be a helpful component of a weight loss program because it will further increase your caloric deficit, but it is less important than the other two for weight loss.

Your question about whether you can be "perfectly healthy" without cardio is a slightly different question. Cardio improves your cardiovascular health, and so it is a good thing to do, especially if you have other risk factors associated with heart attacks, even if you're not trying to lose weight. There is an increasing body of evidence that HIIT might produce the same cardiovascular health benefits as traditional cardio, but this is an emerging area of research, so I think it is premature to say that HIIT is a complete substitute for cardio for heart health.

Thank you! I feel like I'm understanding now. Maybe it's the format of these boards, but the information is so piecemeal...one person says it's all about diet, another says it's all about calories in & calories out, another says it's all about buidling muscles...it's nice to get the information in a way that explains how they all relate to one another.

[Anonymous]

Cardio makes me very hungry, and I've gained 10 lbs since I started at the gym a year ago. Thinking it would be better to sit on my ass.