The Hierarchy of Fat Loss

ShaneT99

Here's a great article on the most effective ways to accelerate your fat loss. It's written by Alwyn Cosgrove, who is considered to be one of the top trainers in the nation.

http://alwyncosgrove.com/2010/01/hierarchy-of-fat-loss

I don't know how to make it a link so you'll need to copy and paste if you want to read it.

Nina74

Great article! Thanks for sharing!

cutmd

I've read this article before and totally agree. The order of priority when trying to lose weight is:

1. Diet
2. Resistance training
3. HIIT
4. Cardio
5. Moving more

The caveat is to make sure you don't end up moving less while you're doing the above. The author suggests incorporating more of the list as time allows. I make sure I resistance train 3x a week but have been lazy to do hiit. Fortunately turbo fire is making me do it :happy:

Shawna35

Great article! Thanks..

Edited to ask: Is swimming resistance training or cardio? Sorry probably pretty dumb question but I'm new at this! Thanks

olivia39

Great article! I learned a lot! thanks for sharing

ShaneT99

Great article! Thanks..

Edited to ask: Is swimming resistance training or cardio? Sorry probably pretty dumb question but I'm new at this! Thanks

I would consider swimming to be cardio.

ShaneT99

I've read this article before and totally agree. The order of priority when trying to lose weight is:

1. Diet
2. Resistance training
3. HIIT
4. Cardio
5. Moving more

That's a great summary of the article.

Shawna35

Thanks Shane!

1Steph1

Love this! Thanks so much

hroush

This is a great article. When I first started working out, I was doing something similar to #1 and didn't even realize it. I was working every muscle group for an hour 4 days a week. It explains how I was able to lose 2 lbs a week with no diet change. Definitely will start doing this again.

Yurippe

bump

fullofhealthandvitality

Super article _ saved to desktop now so no excuses for me - or at least until i find time to dream up some new ones. Thanks for sharing.

canstey

I've read this article before and totally agree. The order of priority when trying to lose weight is:

1. Diet
2. Resistance training
3. HIIT
4. Cardio
5. Moving more

The caveat is to make sure you don't end up moving less while you're doing the above. The author suggests incorporating more of the list as time allows. I make sure I resistance train 3x a week but have been lazy to do hiit. Fortunately turbo fire is making me do it :happy:

If you read the actual studies the article references, your order is incorrect for weight loss. For weight loss it is:
1. Diet
2. Cardio
3. Strength training

In the article "Effects of resistance vs. aerobic training combined with an 800 calorie liquid diet on lean body mass and resting metabolic rate.", the cardio group lost more weight than the resistance training group. This happened because the subjects were on a fixed calorie diet so weight loss is directly tied to exercise calories and cardio burns more calories overall since the exercise can be maintained longer. This is different than MFP where it recommends a fixed calorie deficit (weight loss) and diet fluctuates with exercise calories burned to maintain the fixed deficit.

In the article "Influence of exercise training on physiological and performance changes with weight loss in men." each group (diet alone, diet + cardio, and diet + cardio + strength) lost an equal amount of weight so strength training did not increase weight loss over cardio alone. Strength training improved body composition but the study was only 12 weeks (the initial weight loss) and did not measure body composition all the way to ideal weight to see if the initial advantage was maintained over the entire weight loss.

So if you are very over weight and simply want to get the weight off period and then worry about muscle and fitness, cardio is more effective than strength training. However if you are only a bit over weight and would like to get to your ideal weight with less fat and more LBM then strength training may be more effective but may also take longer to get there depending on whether you are using a fixed caloric diet or a fixed deficit (MFP way). The other choice is to lose the weight and then strength train to alter body composition.

Yurippe

I've read this article before and totally agree. The order of priority when trying to lose weight is:

1. Diet
2. Resistance training
3. HIIT
4. Cardio
5. Moving more

The caveat is to make sure you don't end up moving less while you're doing the above. The author suggests incorporating more of the list as time allows. I make sure I resistance train 3x a week but have been lazy to do hiit. Fortunately turbo fire is making me do it :happy:

If you read the actual studies the article references, your order is incorrect for weight loss. For weight loss it is:
1. Diet
2. Cardio
3. Strength training

In the article "Effects of resistance vs. aerobic training combined with an 800 calorie liquid diet on lean body mass and resting metabolic rate.", the cardio group lost more weight than the resistance training group. This happened because the subjects were on a fixed calorie diet so weight loss is directly tied to exercise calories and cardio burns more calories overall since the exercise can be maintained longer. This is different than MFP where it recommends a fixed calorie deficit (weight loss) and diet fluctuates with exercise calories burned to maintain the fixed deficit.

In the article "Influence of exercise training on physiological and performance changes with weight loss in men." each group (diet alone, diet + cardio, and diet + cardio + strength) lost an equal amount of weight so strength training did not increase weight loss over cardio alone. Strength training improved body composition but the study was only 12 weeks (the initial weight loss) and did not measure body composition all the way to ideal weight to see if the initial advantage was maintained over the entire weight loss.

So if you are very over weight and simply want to get the weight off period and then worry about muscle and fitness, cardio is more effective than strength training. However if you are only a bit over weight and would like to get to your ideal weight with less fat and more LBM then strength training may be more effective but may also take longer to get there depending on whether you are using a fixed caloric diet or a fixed deficit (MFP way). The other choice is to lose the weight and then strength train to alter body composition.

This was my understanding as well. This article is about fat loss (changing your body composition), not weight loss.

ShaneT99

If you read the actual studies the article references, your order is incorrect for weight loss. For weight loss it is:
1. Diet
2. Cardio
3. Strength training

Just remember that there's a difference between weight loss and fat loss. If weight loss is your goal then you should be doing cardio, cardio and more cardio. If fat loss is your goal then you're better served with resistance training, high intensity cardio and then whatever additional cardio you can get on top of that. That was the point of the article.

For FAT loss:

1. Diet
2. Resistance Training
3. High intensity Cardio
4 - 6. Other forms of cardio.

It's true that you can lose a ton of weight doing just cardio and a calorie deficit. The problem is that you lose a lot of muscle too, which of course lowers your metabolism. For fat loss you want to keep your metabolism as high as possible, which means keeping as much muscle as you possibly can (if not building more).

Edited to add that I just realized you were basically saying the same thing.

cutmd

Yeah when I said weight loss it was under the assumption that no one would ever want to lose muscle, just fat. What's the point of losing weight if you just get fatter? :indifferent:

Connie48

I've read this article before and totally agree. The order of priority when trying to lose weight is:

1. Diet
2. Resistance training
3. HIIT
4. Cardio
5. Moving more

The caveat is to make sure you don't end up moving less while you're doing the above. The author suggests incorporating more of the list as time allows. I make sure I resistance train 3x a week but have been lazy to do hiit. Fortunately turbo fire is making me do it :happy:

Great list, short and simple!