Your Cardio Routine Is Making You Fat

[QuotaMan]

(for the record, I'm not necessarily knocking cardio, I do some but definitely not as much as I used to)

 

http://health.yahoo.net/experts/yahoo-spotlight/why-your-cardio-routine-making-you-fat

 

Are you interested in gaining weight? If you are, perform cardiovascular exercise, and a lot of it.

 

Are you interested in losing weight? Then you should cut back on classic cardiovascular exercise. Shun it, even. Abolish it. Throw out your treadmill or better yet, give it to someone you don’t like as cardio doesn’t work if your goal is long-term weight loss.

 

There truly is only one reason to exercise: To increase your metabolism in order to burn more calories 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

 

What is the only style of exercise that accomplishes that goal?

 

Strength training. Increasing your metabolism through strength training is the key to successful, permanent weight loss.

 

Why? Because a classic diet coupled with cardiovascular exercise will result in weight loss, but it will come at a cost as 60% of the weight loss will be fat (that's good!) while the remaining 40% will come from muscle (that's really, really bad!). 

Natural Muscle Loss After Age 20

You never want to lose lean muscle tissue. It's simple mathematics.

• One pound of muscle burns six calories per pound per day.
• One pound of fat burns two calories per pound per day.

That four calorie difference may not sound like much, but for most people, that’s the difference between living lean and living obese and even morbidly obese (defined by those who are 100 or more pounds overweight).

 

To further complicate things, after the age of 20, the average person loses one-half to seven-tenths of a pound of muscle a year. That’s 5 to 7 pounds a decade.

 

As women approach menopause, the rate at which they lose muscle doubles, which is why so many women begin to gain weight right around that time of life.

 

After the age of 70, the average person loses 3 pounds of muscle—per year! And you wonder why some of our formerly lean celebrities blow up before our eyes. Did I hear William Shatner? Come on, did young Captain Kirk look like he had a weight problem?

 

Why is this weight gain happening? It's simple—muscle loss. When you lose muscle, your metabolism is destroyed.

You are also decimating your metabolism by dieting without exercise or dieting with cardio. Your successful weight loss formula is dieting plus strength training. Period.

How Cardio (Negatively) Effects Your Body

In 2007, my book The Cardio-Free Diet was published and went on to become a New York Times best-seller. The original title of the book was CARDIO KILLS, and to this day I believe that was a far more effective representations of my opinion. That book represented a revolutionary, highly controversial approach to exercise, which continues to gain a huge following. I firmly believe that classic cardiovascular exercise is a total waste of your time because it has adverse effects on your body in the following ways:

• Your Joints: An article about "boomeritis" in The New York Times reveals that the number two reason baby boomers visit their doctor is because of an exercise-related injury, most of which are attributable to the punishing nature of classic cardio.
• Your Posture: Do you really want the rounded shoulder, chin jutting alignment of a runner, stair stepper or spin fanatic?
• Your Immunity: Want to get sick and tired? Blast the life out of your immunity, which is what happens after 20 to 30 minutes of classic cardio. Why do you think so many marathon runners get sick post event or during training?
• Your Lungs: A brilliant article by Men's Health called “Dying Breaths” proved that while exercising in a heavily polluted area, such as Central Park or along Lake Shore Drive in Chicago (my hometown), you are gulping down gallons of toxic air. You might as well put your mouth over the exhaust of your car as that is the quality of what you are breathing. Just think of what those toxins are doing to your insides? How about the wrinkled, gray pallor of most runners’ faces. Ever wonder why?
• Your Shape: If you are shaped like a pear and do manage to lose a few pounds with cardio, what do you end up looking like? A smaller pear. This won’t get me out of bed and into the gym with gusto as cardio does nothing to change your body’s composition and often results in a big old muffin top from all the stress.
• Your Muscle: After 20 to 30 minutes, most classic, steady state cardiovascular exercise begins to chew up your precious, calorie-burning muscle. Shocking to realize that something you believed was the ultimate weight-loss tool ends up being the ultimate weight-gain tool because the moment you chew up that muscle, you are in a metabolic free fall.

But wait, there is one thing cardio doesn’t kill—your appetite. Go out for a run, burn a few calories, and then come back and eat up twice as many calories. Translation: Weight (and fat) gain. Doesn’t sound like a solution to me.

Interval Training Works Best

Clearly exercise is a must to lose weight, so what should you be doing? Only interval-based strength training. Here are the benefits: 

• Better heart health than classic cardio because exercising in intervals enhances what is called heart rate variability, and by doing so, you reduce your risk of heart disease much more than classic cardio.
• A maintenance and increase in your lean muscle tissue. A diet without strength training results in a diminished metabolism. I bet you always wondered why you couldn’t keep the weight off. It’s simple, without strength training, you are all but doomed to fail.
• An enhanced after burn. You never want to worry about the calories you burn during exercise. More important are the calories burned after exercise, called EPOC (Excess, Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption). You get up to 38 hours of EPOC from interval-based strength training. That is the key to long-term weight loss success. (You get maybe two to three hours of EPOC from classic cardio training.) 
• Optimized posture. When you properly balance your interval-based strength training, you immediately see improvement in your posture.  
• Flat abs. Honestly, most abdominal exercises are a complete and utter waste of time. Want to burn abdominal fat? Strength train your upper and lower body, blast off that fat, and reveal defined abs. 
• Results. If you don’t believe me, take the “Jim Karas Challenge.” Go to your gym, and look at the people performing cardio. More than likely, they are not in shape, hanging over the machines, frowning, and burning nothing but their precious time, which all but guarantees that they will continue to “live life large,” and that’s not “large” in a good way. Then look at the people performing strength training. What do you see? People who are long and lean with flat abs, great posture, and sexy bodies. Which person would you rather be?

 

 

 

 

[FROST MEDIC999]

As i do FA Cardio does that mean.i.am Fit and Slimish then 5555

[999Baht]

I think someone just wants to sell their book.

Not you quotaman but the author making such bold claims...and why not??? 

It will sell books or at least get people talking about it. 

As i do FA Cardio does that mean.i.am Fit and Slimish then 5555

I know it's 3 posts too late but congrats on making it to 6K mate!

[raviinc]

Great post. Would it be wise to combine cardio plus weight training say 30 minutes each?

[Sam Beckett]

Great post. Would it be wise to combine cardio plus weight training say 30 minutes each?

 

 

Yeah , Cardio alone is no good for weight loss

Need some resistance training to build muscle

Muscle will burn Fat

Cardio is a good fat burner

[QuotaMan]

Yeah , Cardio alone is no good for weight loss

Need some resistance training to build muscle

Muscle will burn Fat

Cardio is a good fat burner

 

I concur, both are good.

 

But for cardio, try not to do endless one hour sessions on the elliptical or running for 10 miles.

 

Do cardio that raises your heart beat in cycles. For example, warm up by running for 5, 10 minutes slowly, then do a series of sprints. Or on an elliptical, after warming up, alternate fast bursts on the machine followed by brief rest, and repeat that for 5-10 minutes followed by cool down.

 

But spend more of your time lifting weights, whole body exercises as well as a bodybuilding type routine.

[Big G]

I concur, both are good.

 

But for cardio, try not to do endless one hour sessions on the elliptical or running for 10 miles.

 

Do cardio that raises your heart beat in cycles. For example, warm up by running for 5, 10 minutes slowly, then do a series of sprints. Or on an elliptical, after warming up, alternate fast bursts on the machine followed by brief rest, and repeat that for 5-10 minutes followed by cool down.

 

But spend more of your time lifting weights, whole body exercises as well as a bodybuilding type routine.

This is a great read on this 

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT): Best Cardio to Burn Fat

http://www.builtlean.com/2010/06/04/high-intensity-interval-training-hiit-best-cardio-to-burn-fat/

[tomei]

Great advice on the cardio. Right now I am trying to lose weight with regular 60 minute elliptical every day. I will be doing some HIIIT and maybe some weights but I don't want to be to bulky.

[Mongster]

Totally agree with the article and post info. If you want living proof take alook at an Olympic marathon runner v an Olympic sprinter....who do you want to look like?

 

Tomei, do not let the fear of bulking up put you off lifting and lifting heavy for that matter. Bulking up v leaning out has a small fraction to do with your workout and is about 75% what your diet looks like. If you want to gain size up your cals and carbs if you want to lean out lower the cals and get a majority of your daily cal intake from leafy greens, lean meats, and good fat.

 

Being in my early 30's I have witnessed way to many of my friends try to fight the battle of the bulge through cardio alone and they end up worse off being "skinny fat". This sets them up for further failure as they drop a shit ton of muscle in order to make the scale give them a lower number and when they get an injury or burnout on cardio the end up twice as fat as before they started since they have little muscle and metabolism is shot to hell.

[donmarco]

Too funny. I'm almost 50, been 100% cardio (running/cycling) and maintain 8-9% bodyfat on autopilot and good muscle mass. 90% of your fat is diet and not what you do...

[Mongster]

Too funny. I'm almost 50, been 100% cardio (running/cycling) and maintain 8-9% bodyfat on autopilot and good muscle mass. 90% of your fat is diet and not what you do...

Agree with your statement regarding diet to great extent. Some guys are fortunate where they are naturally muscular and can get away with just doing cardio to keep the fat off. Congrats for you.

 

the info being provided regarding cardio and body composition is based in science not the specific situation of a select individual. There are always going to be people who are non respondent to exercise programs or are genetically blessed and can be lean and muscular by simply rolling out of bed each am.

 

We all know that guy that eats like shit and never lifted a weight and are yoked.

[999Baht]

And here I was thinking it was all the bad food and poor diet that made me fat!

[kikielee]

Too funny. I'm almost 50, been 100% cardio (running/cycling) and maintain 8-9% bodyfat on autopilot and good muscle mass. 90% of your fat is diet and not what you do...

100% cardio- 8-8% bf & good muscle mass??  .....amazing genetics !

[kikielee]

Once you burn your glycogen, then your body goes catabolic...hence the fashionable term 'skiny fat'. To maintain muscle mass you must do resistance training. And do it well into old age...keeps skelital mass also.