Aerobic vs anaerobic workout

shelleysykeskeene

Hi all

What is better for weight loss - aerobic or anaerobic exercise?

I have noticed during my HIIT/Tabata workout my fitness watch classes half the workout as aerobic and the other half is anaerobic.

Also when I walk it classes my brisk inclined walk as anaerobic and my normal (non incline) moderate walking pace as aerobic. (for example today I did a 1hr walk, 45min was classed as anaerobic and 15 was aerobic)

Vo2 Max is always 0.

What should I be aiming for with regards to fat loss and muscle gain?

I know that building lean muscle is important for weight loss and I am not doing any weight training as yet. I have around 24 kilos to lose and want to drop 10kg before I add weight training to my regime.

Any and all advice welcome!

TeaBea

Think of exercise as something you do for your health instead of something you do for weight loss. With this app you get a calorie goal before exercise, then you log exercise and eat those calories back. If you are doing it right, the net calorie effect is zero. You don't use exercise to jack up the deficit.

If you were exercising for weight loss you would always pick the highest calorie burner....period. If you were exercising for weight loss you wouldn't bother with strength training because it burns so few calories. But that wouldn't be a healthy approach.

Do cardio for your heart and lungs. Do strength training to help RETAIN a larger % of lean muscle mass while losing weight. If your goal is gaining muscle, eat at a calorie surplus, use a progressive weight lifting program and get a decent amount of protein.

AnnPT77

Anaerobic vs. aerobic literally doesn't matter for weight loss. It may matter for certain fitness goals.

I'll give you the short answer first, but I do want to explain: Anaerobic exercise typically burns somewhat more calories per minute than the same exercise at aerobic intensity, but physiologically we can't do it for as long a time, without fatigue cutting into the calorie benefits. Working at the highest possible intensity may be counterproductive, and the calorie benefit isn't usually all that huge.

Long explanation:

What matters for weight loss is how the number of calories you burn (from just being alive plus all activities, not just exercise) compares to the number of calories you eat. (What you eat can affect how full you feel, and maybe affect energy level in the long run; so it affects weight loss indirectly, and nutrition affects health significantly, so what you eat isn't irrelevant. But it's not the big deal for weight loss, if that's considered alone.)

First, remember that if MFP estimated your calorie goal, it intends for you to eat back a reasonable extimate of your exercise calories. Your calorie deficit (weight loss) is built into your base calorie goal. So, if you exercise more, it expects you to eat more to fuel that exercise. In that setting, exercise doesn't cause or speed up weight loss. It's for health and fitness. If you got your calorie goal from another source, it may have different assumptions.

Beyond that, if you do want to use exercise to lose weight faster (not necessarily a good thing, if too fast), it may be useful to consider a few things:

* Usually, working harder for the same amount of time at the same activity will burn more calories than working less hard. So, anaerobic exercise can burn more calories per minute, compared to the same exercise at aerobic intensity.

* Working longer (more clock time) burns more calories than does a shorter workout of the same intensity and activity.

* Working harder ususally limits how long a person can keep working. (It gets fatiguing, but at some point in very, very intense exercise, done for a long time for one's current fitness level, one's body will simply fail to perform - slow down, stumble, faint, whatever. Usually fatigue will stop you before you reach that point.)

* If we exercise so hard/long/often that we get severely fatigued, we tend to drag through the rest of our day, and end up burning fewer calories via daily life activity (rest more, sleep more, don't feel like doing our effort-intensive home chores and put them off or shortcut them, maybe decide to go to a movie instead of window shopping with friends, etc.). That reduction in daily life activity wipes out some of the exercise calorie benefits. This effect may not show up right away, but as a cumulative effect after a period of time with too-intense/frequent/long exercise.

* Doing very intense exercise can have a larger percentage "afterburn" (really called EPOC, excess post-exercise oxygen consumption). I mention this because people make a big deal out of this being an advantage for HIIT. But when you do the math about how many calories' difference there is, it's quite a trivial number, especially in that less intense exercise also has EPOC, just a lower percentage. For weight loss and fitness, it's really not very important.

So, as I hope that illustrates, there are tradeoffs in what will be the right exercise intensity. If you're using exercise to create part of your calorie deficit for weight loss, you want to find your personal sweet spot.

Personally, I'd suggest thinking first about how much time you can and want to spend exercising on a long-term (ideally permanent) basis, while still maintaining good life balance: Enough time and energy for work, family, home chores, non-exercise hobbies, and other things that may be important to you. That's sort of the upper limit for time to spend.

IMO, the sweet spot is exercising for that amount of time (or whatever fraction of it your current fitness level permits), at an intensity that's a little challenging for you, but that leaves you feeling energized for the rest of your day(s), rather than fatigued, dragged out, exhausted. (A few minutes' "whew" feeling right after the exercise is fine, as long as you feel good once that's over.) Ideally, looking over an average week, there'll be a combination of strength challenge (weight training is an excellent option, but not the only one), and cardiovascular challenge. (Those aren't exclusive separate calories: Some activities have partial benefits in both areas.)

At first, fitness may be a limiting factor, rather than the "good life balance" thing. It can be good to gradually ramp up from a schedule with every-other-day (or less) workouts of manageable intensity/length, and add more frequency, duration, and/or intensity as fitness improves, to keep it always a little challenging, but energizing, in a context of good life balance.

Obviously, this is just my opinion (coming from an active li'l ol' lady approaching the 5th year of maintaining a healthy weight, after literally decades of obesity). You may prefer to look at it differently.

Best wishes!

mmapags

shelleysykeskeene wrote: »

Hi all

What is better for weight loss - aerobic or anaerobic exercise?

I have noticed during my HIIT/Tabata workout my fitness watch classes half the workout as aerobic and the other half is anaerobic.

Also when I walk it classes my brisk inclined walk as anaerobic and my normal (non incline) moderate walking pace as aerobic. (for example today I did a 1hr walk, 45min was classed as anaerobic and 15 was aerobic)

Vo2 Max is always 0.

What should I be aiming for with regards to fat loss and muscle gain?

I know that building lean muscle is important for weight loss and I am not doing any weight training as yet. I have around 24 kilos to lose and want to drop 10kg before I add weight training to my regime.

Any and all advice welcome!

TeaBea covered it pretty well. A couple of details that I will touch on. When you are new to weight training you can gain some muscle in a deficit. Newbie gains will only happen for a couple of months in an untrained individual.

You may still gain a slight amount of muscle if your deficit is small and your protein is adequate.

The other things is that building muscle (note I didn't say "lean" muscle. All muscle is lean.) is not particularly important for weight loss. A lb of muscle burns about 6 calories per day. A lb of fat burns about 4 calories per day (yes, fat is metabolically active). Weight/fat loss is accomplished by calorie deficit.

Gaining muscle is a great idea for many reasons. But weight/fat loss benefit is not one of them.

sijomial

shelleysykeskeene wrote: »

Vo2 Max is always 0.

I sincerely hope not as you would be dead if you couldn't take up any oxygen.

BTW - anaerobic cardio is exceedingly short duration, I think your incline walking is very unlikely to be taking you into the anaerobic zone. That doesn't mean it isn't challenging or an ineffective exercise though, just miscategorised by whatever device you are using.

BTW2 - don't wait to incorporate resistance training, do it from day 1.

NorthCascades

Aerobic because you can do it for longer which burns more calories. Also for many people, anaerobic exercise makes them hungrier, probably because it burns through glycogen which much be replaced by eating carbs.