Cardio?? Weight training ?? Weight loss?? What you should be doing!
In “fitness” there are a ton of misconceptions on how to get fit, here are a few:
Starvation dieting= Skinny Fat !
Low-carb mania= HANGRY
Most fitness magazines- can you say Photoshop?
The cult of “clean eating“.. wait what is a clean food?
“Weight loss pills” – Yup they are magic.. melts the fat right off…
Supplements that claim anything can be done in less than a week
Celebrity workouts- 2 lb. booty workouts
Most weightlifting advice given to women.. You shouldn’t lift heavy, you will look like a man.. Enough said!
Here is the TRUTH ! You CAN eat foods you like. You don’t need hours on a treadmill. All you need a a good plan of action. and learning this concept first. You don’t want to lose weight! You want to lose body fat and keep the muscle.
If your goal is simply reducing the number on the scale, you can thoroughly accomplish this…and wind up skinny fat.This is because many popular weight loss regimens restrict food intake too heavily and involve far too much exercise, and the result is considerable loss of both fat and muscle.
If, however, you reduce your body fat percentage while maintaining or gaining muscle, you’ve done the opposite you’ve improved your body composition. If this is obvious to you, you’re in the minority. Most people don’t realize how much muscle they can lose with a poorly designed weight loss routine and how weak and soft they can look when it’s all said and done.
Now don’t think that exercise now negates what you do in the kitchen. It’s science not magic. Guess how much energy 30 minutes of vigorous running burns?
For someone that weighs 150 pounds, about 400 calories. And guess how easy it is to eat that right back?
A handful of nuts, a yogurt, and an apple does the trick. Or if you’re the more indulgent type, a measly chocolate chip cookie with a cup-and-some of milk. My point isn’t that you shouldn’t eat nuts, yogurt, apples, or cookies when you want to lose weight, of course, but that exercise just doesn’t burn as much energy as we wish it did.
One point you need to remember is that your body adapts to your new calories and exercise level. Research shows that when in a calorie deficit, the body strives to increase energy efficiency.
This means that, as time goes on, less and less energy is needed to continue doing the same types of workouts. This also means that you’re no longer burning as much energy as you think you are, which increases the likelihood of overeating (which causes the dreaded plateau).Many people stuck in this quandary refuse to give up, though, and try to beat it with more cardio. NO STOP !
The best type of cardio for weight loss would burn a considerable amount of energy in a relatively short amount of time.
That way you could use it to dramatically increase energy expenditure (and thus fat burning) without having to do so much that you burn away muscle as well.Well, there happens to be a type of cardio that fits this bill perfectly, and it’s called high-intensity interval training, or HIIT for short. You know what else is great? MET-CON’s ! Yes CrossFit met-cons are great for burning calories and keeping muscle. In addition to met-cons are weight training exercises.
The best type of weightlifting for weight loss would do two things:
1.) Effectively preserve or build muscle.
2.) Burn a lot of energy.
So hit the weights and hit them hard if you want to “supercharge your metabolism” and maybe even build muscle and lose fat at the same time.
Don’t make fat loss more complicated than it has to be.
Do a few hours of heavy, compound weightlifting per week.
Do an hour or two of HIIT cardio per week.
Maintain a moderately aggressive calorie deficit.