Once upon a time, if you asked a fitness professional how to lose weight, they’d reply with four simple words: get on a treadmill.
Cardiovascular work – long, slow, and (for some) boring – was the go-to option for anyone who needed to lose weight. Whether it was running, cycling, rowing or even walking, any exercise that tested your stamina over a long duration, rather than your strength over a short one, was seen as the overweight person’s friend.
Ask that same professional today, however, and the answer might not be so cut and dry.
There’s a raging debate in the fitness world about whether resistance training (weightlifting, to you and me) isn’t actually more effective at bringing about fat loss than cardio work. Annoyingly, as with many debates in the weight loss world, there isn’t a clear answer – there are simply too many personal variables and differing training regimes to ever settle on one option. But, that doesn’t stop me from having an opinion on the subject!
Before we get into which I prefer, it’s important to understand the context of the question. Normally, people talk about wanting to achieve weight loss – but what they really mean is fat loss. They don’t want to lose lean muscle, which would slow their metabolism and make them look less athletic; instead, they want to lose the unsightly fat.
To always keep this context in mind, abide by the rule that …
The maintenance of muscle mass should take precedence over the loss of bodyfat
Any training regime you embark on to lose fat and get lean should have been built with maintaining your lean muscle mass in mind.
Applying this to the cardio vs weightlifting issue, here’s how the two compare:
Cardio
Pros
- Very high calorie burn during session (falls off shortly after)
- Low barrier to entry, many different activities can be incorporated
- Excellent low intensity options for fat loss i.e walking
- Little need for rest in comparison to weight training
Cons
- Most people will use running as default cardio, but over running is a common problem, resulting in injuries and strains
- Difficult for very unfit people to get into, except at very low intensity
- Moderate to intense sustained cardio is not ideal for hormone balance, especially for those with high cortisol levels (a sign of tiredness and/or stress)
- Extremely difficult to create a balanced physique through cardio alone
Weight Training
Pros
- Increases muscle mass quickly
- Causes a sustained spike in metabolism, which means you burn calories long after the exercise is over
- Low barrier to entry for the very unfit
- Offers the ability to grow muscle and lose fat simultaneously
Cons
- Higher barrier to recovery (e.g. a four hour walk is great whereas a four hour weight session would be counter productive)
- Lower caloric burn in comparison to cardio (minute by minute, not over time)
- Lots of bad information on the market, leading to poor results
- Can increase hunger significantly, so discipline with diet becomes a factor in success
So, which would I choose? The answer is quite simple; weight training.
Weight training simply offers most of the health benefits of cardio, while most of the fat loss benefits of cardio can be achieved simply through reducing caloric intake.
However … that does not mean I would suggest you design a fat loss program around weight training instead of cardio. It sounds obvious, but the question at the heart of the debate is false: no one has to do one or the other.
