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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=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.  [/quote]

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

This is an oversimplification, since the body is not a fixed system.  If you create a drastic caloric deficit, your metabolism will adjust to burn fewer calories (and probably make you sluggish etc).  By how much probably has a genetic component to it.  That being said, creating a caloric deficit is still a requirement.  And one of the better ways to achievement is not through drastic/binge-dieting but instead through sustainable dietary changes that result in a lower calorie diet overall.  There are certainly problems with South Beach Diet, but that is one of the mainstream diet programs out there that sets up lifestyle change as the goal.

In terms of metabolism boosting, exercise is a great way to do that.  Science is mixed here, but it seems like increasingly muscle helps increase your metabolism overall due to the fact that it takes more energy to maintain and to move muscle around (this is why the caloric burn for two people of the same weight can be really different).  Muscle is also more dense than fat, which is why BMI is a terrible indicator of obesity in athletic people.  I think there is a decent amount of evidence to suggest that the heart rates that are considered optimal for cardiac health are actually too high for "fat burning".  So if your goal is weight loss, traditional cardio probably won't serve you as well as interval training which builds more muscle and increases your heart rate but not as much.

Ultimately, though, everyone's bodies are different and you need to find what's best for you.  I basically can't lose weight without incorporating strength training, but DH visibly gets leaner after only a couple weeks of being diligent about cardio.[/quote]

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