Do I need to add cardio to my routine to start burning fat?
I used to have a fast metabolism, but as I hit 30 and became less active it really changed; I no longer was able to eat what ever I wanted and not see any significant change on my body, I used to hit a max of 225lbs and wonder why I could never get passed it. Then as I wasn't being very active and got older I climbed all the way to 265lbs and at first I thought finally I was able to get passed that 220 max, figured I had just bulked up and just needed to cut now. Although my bulking wasn't due to gaining muscle it was fat and not what I had in mind. Now I'm back in the gym 3 times a week for 1-2 hours, and doing my sets to failure (untill I can't do another rep, I'm counting my calories ect. Not eating junk, and trying to get a walk in when I can. I'm already gaining the muscle I had when I used to go hard in the gym, so I wasn't expecting to drop weight right away anyways. So what I am wondering is what is the best way for me to burn fat get a lower over all body fat percentage but keep my lean muscle/ muscle and maybe even speed up my metabolism, drop cortisol levels and up testosterone levels ? Any answers are welcome to any parts of my questions, thanks everyone this is my first post, my name is Jarrett and I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Answers
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Do you need cardio to lose weight? Nope. All you need to lose weight is to consume fewer calories than you burn. You can do this through eating less, exercising more, or a combination. Cardio burns more calories per minute than weightlifting and can be helpful to tilt the calorie balance in favor of losing weight, and cardio has wonderful benefits for the cardiovascular system. But strictly speaking, you do not need cardio to lose weight.
What you do need is to figure out what your baseline calorie needs are to maintain weight, not going up or down. Once you know that, tilt the balance in favor of dropping weight by either decreasing calories eaten or increasing movement, or both. The greater the tilt, the faster the weight loss.
A couple words of caution if your goal is to maintain muscle while losing the fat; fast loss almost always includes losing muscle along with the fat, so keep the rate of loss moderate, only 1lb per week or so. This means the tilt should be about 500 calories per day below maintenance. In addition, keep protein intake high, at least 0.7g/lb of bodyweight. If your goal is to lose a fair chunk of weight, you can do the calculation based upon your goal weight, rather than your current weight.
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Good advice from Tom.
Short of a disease condition, it's highly unlikely that your metabolism has dropped big time at age 30. Recent research suggests metabolism per se is pretty stable from around ages 20 to 60, after which it drops slowly.
What's much, much more common is that our overall lifestyle becomes less active: Less physical jobs, social activities less physical, gradually reduced home chores as we finish some things and hire out others, less foot/bike transportation and more door-to-door drives, etc. It can be subtle and gradual, but it adds up.
For most people, the biggest calorie expenditure daily is BMR/RMR, the calories we burn just being alive. Second biggest, for most, is non-exercise energy expenditure, NEAT, the calories we burn doing things like our job, home chores, non-exercise hobbies, and that sort of thing. Intentional exercise tends to be third in magnitude.
Most people don't realize how big a deal NEAT is, IME.
If you truly believe you have a "metabolic" issue, via RMR/BMR, ask your doctor for relevant blood tests, various nutritional issues, thyroid function, that sort of thing. Based on population tendencies, NEAT reduction is more probable as an explanation, IMO.
Sure, increasing cardio increases daily calorie burn, as long as you don't overdo it (fatigue is counter-productive for either of weight loss or fitness improvement). Don't spend so much time on cardio that you throw your life out of overall good balance - enough time/energy for job, family, social life, non-exercise hobbies, home chores, etc. - because it's unlikely you'll stick with an out-of-balance life long term, and regain would happen unless you do make the necessary reductions on the eating side of the equation.
If you do increase cardio, pick something fun , or at least tolerable and practical. That increases the chance you'll stick to it. Cardio is good for a body, worth doing, health-promoting in reasonable doses. While it increases calorie needs, there's nothing magic about it when it comes to weight loss. Weight loss is about calorie balance, like Tom said.
Best wishes - IME, success is worth the effort.
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Mike, not Tom, but thanks.
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you can lose weight by not doing cardio ... but if you can do cardio do it because it will make weight loss easier basically while you are doing cardio … you are burning fat and glycogen stores to be able to do it… I say find a cardio you love .. I have always like biking never really been a runner .. boxing?.. that’s also cardio.. I think only people who actually can’t do cardio shouldnt.. chubby people
Can’t do cardio at least not very well because you need to be lean to do it . Therefore cardio makes you lean .. the good news is even when you stopped doing cardio and become out of shape you can become in better shape by doing a bit of cardio everyday. I’m 36 and I do and I’m the same weight I was in my 20s
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What the actual heck?
People don't need to be lean to do cardio. I wasn't lean when I started doing cardio, I was obese, even. I did a lot of cardio, intense cardio, 6 days of cardio most weeks, races even . . . and medaled in some races, but I don't mean just participation medals. I think that's doing cardio reasonably well. I did that for about a dozen years. While - I repeat - actually quite fat.
Where in the world did you get the idea that fat people can't do cardio or shouldn't do cardio or can't do it well? And where did you get the idea that cardio inherently makes you lean, just by doing it, no other factors? That's nonsense.
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all Olympic athletes are lean so chubby people are just not as in shape sorry but they can be
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I would appreciate it if I was not being attacked by randoms on the internet for simply stating facts
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You're moving the goal posts.
What you said was "I think only people who actually can’t do cardio shouldnt.. chubby people" and "Can’t do cardio at least not very well because you need to be lean to do it . Therefore cardio makes you lean .. "
"People" and "you". Now suddenly we're talking about Olympians. Goalposts, moved.
Fat people do cardio. In some running events, there are even "Clydesdale classes" for heavy men, and "Athena classes" for heavy women, including not-lean men and women in each case. In most recreational but competitive running events, there are people who are "chubby", to use your term.
All Olympic athletes are not lean, in the sense of very low body fat. It varies by sport. Sports that involve cardiovascular endurance and moving the body through space with that endurance tend to be very lean - runners, for example. In other sports that do not have those characteristics, Olympic athletes are not all lean. Many, yes. Some professional athletes are fat, on top of being muscular. That's true for some NFL players in certain positions, for example. Typically, their cardiovascular fitness isn't the pits, either.
Am I saying being fat is a performance advantage in most cardiovascular sports? Of course not. But it's not the total performance degradation you seem to be claiming either, let alone a reason why someone who's fat "can't do cardio" as you seemingly first claimed.
I'm going to drop this dispute here, because it's now not on topic for the OP. The basic dispute was on topic, in the sense that if we believed your post, people apparently shouldn't do cardio if they're fat, or can't be decent at cardio when fat. That's inaccurate, and potentially discouraging to people here who want to improve their cardiovascular fitness in addition to improving their body weight.
Fat people can do cardio, can be decent at cardio, and benefit from doing cardio. They benefit from training cardio even if they don't lose weight, independent of the question of whether losing weight would also be helpful to them in performance or health.
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Nope. Check out the sport of Olympic Weightlifting and the heavier classes. These people have cardiovascular fitness (they have to be fit to train for 3 hours at a time) and are phenomenally strong. The heavier classes are also carrying a lot of fat.
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Strong introduction here. Overweight people can and do cardio. Cardio is not only running anyway. It can be cycling, walking, dancing, swimming, rowing, so many more things that get your heartrate up and improve cardiovascular fitness. So why can't overweight people do any of these things again?
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Yeah that's ENTIRELY a fallacy about not being able to do cardio if not lean. Look at NFL Lineman who can run a 5.0 40yd dash, play an hour of football pushing, shoving, running at high intensity? MMA fighters aren't all lean and have good cardio (or else you lose). Same with heavyweight boxers.
And it's not an attack on you. It's an attack on the information that you're providing based on what you perceive as true. Lean Olympic Athletes aren't the only ones who have good cardio. The heavy weight wrestlers, the Olympic lifters, the heavy track and field participants all likely have way better cardio than the average gym goer on a treadmill 1 hour a day.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified instructor
Been in fitness for 40+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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your "facts" are incorrect
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