ARTICLE: Your Cardio Routine Is Making You Fat

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  • welly5
    welly5 Posts: 293 Member
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    Just in defense of the ridiculous title: in publishing you rarely get to choose your own titles for articles. Any article I've ever published in a newspaper or magazine has had a title written by the editors to grab reader's attention. Usually a play on words, something eyecatching, or ..a play on words (i swear to be an editor you have to love puns more than life itself)

    So when I saw the title I was like "hopefully this was just to catch my eye and he won't actually talk about cardio being secretly the reason people gain weight"

    oh wait. yes, yes he did. It ends up being an article with a number of valid points as mixed up with a bunch of baloney.
  • BostonStrong617
    BostonStrong617 Posts: 117
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    So THAT'S why everyone who runs in a marathon is fat, Ive always wondered! Thank you so much for this well researched incredibly insightful and not at all biased article.
  • Railr0aderTony
    Railr0aderTony Posts: 6,803 Member
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    "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."

    This is bullcrap.

    There are MANY reasons to exercise, depends on the individual, and one of the BIGGEST reasons to do it is actually for the cardiovascular benefits related to your heart, lungs, and overall circulatory system. The increase in the efficiency of blood circulation is a HUGE contributor to decrease in many age-related diseases, which have NOTHING to do with metabolism and burning more calories.

    Really, I hate articles like this. While I appreciate the mentality encouraging people, especially women, to participate in more vigorous activities that encourage muscle development, the idea that you should just stop doing cardio because it's now "evil" is a fad-related mentality, and is total bullcrap.

    The BEST approach to working out is to find a balance. Yes, you need some cross-training with resistance, because it helps to maintain muscle mass, which contributes to decreasing bone density loss over time. But you also need to have cardio workouts where your heart and lungs have to work past their normal level of comfort, because it increases the overall efficiency of your blood system, encouraging your heart and muscles to use oxygen more efficiently, which connects EVERYTHING else and impacts every other organ system in your body, not just your skeletal muscles. Sustained cardio, like long-distance running, actually encourages your overall system to be much more efficient with what it uses, and combining high-intensity training, weights, and sustained effort training is a great way to be a balanced athlete overall, because it keeps your body at balanced level of fitness.

    Find a balance. Balance is great. Articles like that encouraging a lack of balance suck.

    End of rant.

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  • SoViLicious
    SoViLicious Posts: 2,633 Member
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    My cardio routine makes me horngry.
  • TheBaileyHunter
    TheBaileyHunter Posts: 641 Member
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    I think that both cardio and strength training is the best way to go.

    ^^^THIS^^^

    Find your balance, but balance is the key. For some it's more cardio with a lighter strength training routine, for others it's the opposite.

    Balance between the two keeps all parts of your body working, and getting stronger - including the heart and lungs.
  • scookiemonster
    scookiemonster Posts: 175 Member
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    Seriously though, this is bull****. The simple fact that the author says that the only reason to exercise is to boost metabolism pretty much automatically invalidates this article for me. There are a lot of reasons I exercise, and boosting my metabolism isn't even the number one reason.

    This is the problem with the internet: any moron with a web connection can get their thoughts published for the world to read. It's great having so much information at our fingertips, but it certainly requires us to be much more discerning in our consumption of that information.

    Edit to add: A quick google search indicates that this guy is making his living off of selling a cardio-free weight loss plan. I wonder why he's out there writing articles about how you lose more weight without cardio...
    General rule of thumb: never trust the advice of someone trying to sell you something. It's likely they might be just a teensy bit biased.
  • watfordjc
    watfordjc Posts: 304 Member
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    "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."

    Anyone that considers themselves an expert should know that increasing metabolism is the least important reason to exercise. To call it the only reason makes me want to stop reading...

    "[...] 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!)."

    Bull****. 99-100% of my weight loss between December 2012 and April 2013 (next Bod Pod scan in a couple of weeks) has been from fat mass alone, and in that time I only lifted weights twice in those 5 months compared to increasing my walking distance from 12 miles per week to 35 miles per week (end of May, 50 miles per week before switching to C25K and weight training, no data to say what effect that change in routine has had).

    Let's see... cardio... RHR has dropped from 92 bpm to 48 bpm, 1-minute heart recovery rate has increased from ~10 bpm to ~35 bpm, I've lost 30% of my weight, and I maintained my deficit even when I was really hungry (how do you burn 5,000 calories in a day from just weight training?)

    Although there are some points with some truth, I think anyone looking to lose significantly more than 25 pounds should take advice from someone whose best "look what I did!" endorsements are:

    "[...] Jim helped former cohost Diane Sawyer lose more than 25 pounds."

    "[...] (and he helped editor-at large and Oprah’s bff, Gayle King, lose 25 pounds)."

    "Jim and his team of trainers also continue to personally work with one of People magazine's “Sexiest Man Alive" Hugh Jackman and with countless other celebrities, CEOs, and soccer moms in Chicago and New York."

    How about Members of the House of Lords and Commons? A Hugh Jackman is not an Eric Pickles, David Cameron, Ed Balls, Ann Widdecombe, or a Diana Abbot.

    Strength training (or equivalent) might be more important when you have less to lose, but someone 4 weeks in with 112 lb of fat mass shouldn't do cardio? Ah, I should have stuck to walking 0.2 miles 4 times per week and started weight lifting a lot earlier!
  • BrainyBurro
    BrainyBurro Posts: 6,129 Member
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    This is the problem with the internet: any moron with a web connection can get their thoughts published for the world to read. It's great having so much information at our fingertips, but it certainly requires us to be much more discerning in our consumption of that information.

    ^ this should be the disclaimer in all of the public MFP forums too.
  • HeidiCooksSupper
    HeidiCooksSupper Posts: 3,831 Member
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    There's a lot of bro-science in this and precious little real science. Among other things, real science -- that is to say recent, actual, controlled experiments -- indicate that the one thing that correlates with a reduction in visceral fat reduction, the dangerous fat that surrounds and resides in your vital organs, is regular aerobic exercise, AKA cardio, of 30 minutes several times a week, preferably daily.

    Crap like the article cited is dangerous, self-serving, ignorant, and stupid and carefully crafted by experts to pull the wool over your eyes.
  • xaMErica
    xaMErica Posts: 284 Member
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    I read this article earlier.. then I walked into my bathroom and got on my scale and tried to figure out where the 46 lbs I lost went.. because I run.. so I couldn't have possibly actually lost that weight.
  • xaMErica
    xaMErica Posts: 284 Member
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    Every time I read a Yahoo article I think: "Well there's X minutes of my life I can't get back." Yet much like a bloody car wreck on the interstate, I always feel compelled to look. The author basically took something that many of us already know (excessive [higher intensity] cardio will cost you muscle) and completely twisted it around into "cardio will make you fat" in order to draw the reader in. Well it worked, but in the end, the author came off looking like an idiot.

    I feel the same -_- I hate Yahoo articles but I can't keep myself from reading!
  • whierd
    whierd Posts: 14,025 Member
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    I appreciate the pro-strength training sentiment, but the dichotomy of strength training or cardio is false. I firmly believe that BOTH are necessary for long term health.
  • Silver_Star
    Silver_Star Posts: 1,351 Member
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    i read that...actually when i first started out walking, i was super hungry and ate everything in sight after my workouts...


    i didnt lose weight for about a month. Thankfully i at least trained myself to go walking...then slowly reduced my eating and ate less processed carbs and more veggies and protein....also...i felt less hungry when i drank a protein shake after my workout...something i didnt know about before.


    so yeah...if youre not on MFP learning about how to eat...then Youre gonna get fatter after cardio..LOL ( just kidding...err partly)
  • BrainyBurro
    BrainyBurro Posts: 6,129 Member
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    I read this article earlier.. then I walked into my bathroom and got on my scale and tried to figure out where the 46 lbs I lost went.. because I run.. so I couldn't have possibly actually lost that weight.

    i think you know what you have to do...

    ...put that 46lbs back on, buy his book, and take it off the right way!!! :angry:
  • graceire
    graceire Posts: 323 Member
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    The line in the article that rings alarm bells is ' in my book'

    That's pretty much where I stopped reading and closed the webpage...
  • oldandhealthier
    oldandhealthier Posts: 449 Member
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    Yeah I read that article this morning and asked my wife how did I manage to lose over 100 lbs doing just cardio. Good thing I did not read his book first or I would never have lost. You are wrong about cardio making your breast bigger because my man boobies are gone.:bigsmile:
  • heleine28
    heleine28 Posts: 34
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    All the weight I have lost was from running. I now do both strength and cardio because I am at my target weight and I want to tone as well as not gain the weight back. I posted this article to get everyone else's feedback. No way running can be bad for you- for one its how I and thousands of others have successful lost weight plus for me its a huge stress reliever.
  • wwwdotcr
    wwwdotcr Posts: 128 Member
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    DO LISS + lifting is the optimal way IMO. That way you dont exhaust yourself to the point of hurting your lifts.
  • tatasmagik
    tatasmagik Posts: 185
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    I read this article earlier.. then I walked into my bathroom and got on my scale and tried to figure out where the 46 lbs I lost went.. because I run.. so I couldn't have possibly actually lost that weight.

    i think you know what you have to do...

    ...put that 46lbs back on, buy his book, and take it off the right way!!! :angry:

    Omg, I laughed so hard.

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