What is the best cardio to burn calories? (From your persona

for me its the cardio wave, i love that machine, a really good work out and as i wiggle along to music it just feels like dancing!

Can't do better than cycling !!! make sure you train in the appropriate zones... Zone 2 for long fat burning rides Zone 4 and above to build muscle.
Doing an appropriate mix of rides, you'll burn fat and build muscle which will help burn more fat.
Cycling has a bonus that is a great social activity, you go sightseeing, and it's very low impact on joints and bones.
Perfect

Rodrigo

Cycling! Burns a lot of calories and is fun!

Ellipticals are great if you crank up the resistance, and they are easy on the knees. I like to do a brisk walk (3.6-4.0 for me) on the treadmill and do intervals of high incline. It can really get your heart rate up.

The calories you burn during an exercise depends on two things: intensity and body weight

After that, a lot of it is personal preference.

It has been shown that some activities are more comfortable (in general) to per perform at a higher level than others. In other words, working at a fixed intensity FEELS easier for whatever reason, therefore one is more likely to sustain a higher effort and thus burn more calories.

Psychological and social preferences can also play a role in increasing motivation to work out harder and remain more adherent to a program.

Theoretically, any aerobic exercise performed at the same intensity should yield roughly equivalent caloric expenditures. As I mentioned before, calories expended depends almost entirely on intensity (for the same person).

For example, when left to self-select intensity based on perceived exertion, most people will work less hard (and thus burn fewer calories) on a stationary bike compared to running or an elliptical. That is mostly due to the fact that cycling involves a smaller amount of muscle mass in a smaller range of motion. Therefore, localized muscle fatigue often becomes a limiting factor in how hard an effort can be sustained. However, if one trains as a cyclist and/or if one is motivated by the support and energy of a spin class, for example, it is possible to achieve intensity levels similar to the other modalities mentioned.

As always, it's not WHAT you do that's most important. It's HOW you do it that makes the difference.

Well said Azdak!. The best exercise is overall, is simply the one you're doing to do consistantly, for you! :-)

spinning, jumping rope, running and interval training (HIIT)

i like hiit training particulary turbo fire hiits per my bodybugg i burned around 300 cal for 20 minutes of activity, not to mention it leaves your heart rate elevated after the work out (more calories burned at a resting state)

yes this!!!!! LOVE HIIT workouts...LOVE turbo fire. saturday I did a 20minute hiit...525 calories burned

However, running is not really a calorie scorching activity unless you're doing it in intervals.

:huh:

This really points out how far the HIIT cultists have moved the goal posts of reality. Now, I'll admit that the recent trend of "running" at speeds of 4.0 mph changes the equation somewhat. However, their are few exercise modalities that provide the calorie "bang for the buck" that running does.

The fact is that running burns more calories at any given perceived level of exertion than almost any other form of exercise. (A recent study suggested that the ARC Trainer scored high as well, but I haven't seen the raw data so I don't know how significant that is).

I meant more for me personally - I don't burn as many calories running as I do during other activities - mainly because I can't run all that fast. If I do intervals I tend to burn a lot more, though.

And I don't quite understand why you put it as "running" when referring to 4.0mph...for me, that is a decent jog...it's hard to get 240 lbs moving very fast. I may be slow, but I'm still lapping the people who are sitting at home on the couch, and I still consider myself a runner. It's statements like you just made that discourage people like me from "running" and I personally don't appreciate comments like that.

The physiologic definition of running has always been 5.0 mph--that's not a value judgement, it's just that below those speeds, the common equations for estimating oxygen uptake, calorie consumption, etc, do not apply because there is too much variability between individuals.

For better or for worse, my natural tendency is to be precise as possible when I write things like this, and so the use of quotation marks for "running" was to identify that as an outlier that might not fit my more general statement about running and burning calories, nothing more.

Since at no time in any of your comments you indicated that you run at 4.0 mph, I think it is somewhat inappropriate for you to instantly interpret my chance statement as being a perjorative one.

However, I understand that these misinterpretations often occur in nonverbal forums, so I apologize for giving offense and I assure you that nothing negative was intended by my use of punctuation.

Totally agree that misinterpretation is all too common in forums - and I understand better now what you are saying. Thank you for clarifying.

For me it is my recumbent bike. I can read and work out which makes it a workout that I will be able to keep up for the rest of my life. (YES, The REST OF MY LIFE! If I want to keep the weight off, I don't want to kid myself!).

So try out all of them, but try to make a hobby out of at least one or two things so you can maintain them and keep doing them. Be honest with yourself :-)

Cheers, Christy

While I do agree that it is good to do exercise that you enjoy and can maintain, I am a big opponent of doing cardio that allows you to concentrate on anything but the actual exercise. I feel that if you can read, talk, or pay attention to something on t.v., you are not working hard enough. I personally like doing intervals on my elliptical. It only takes 20 minutes to burn about 250 calories, and it is hard. I am definitely sweating and feeling very accomplished by the end, but I guess any exercise is better than nothing.

If you can't talk while doing cardio, you're working too hard, and overtraining. Overtraining doesn't give you the fat burning benefits. REmember, calories burned does NOT equal fat burned. You actually burn more fat at lower intensities.

This thread has turned into a Libran's delight--I get to argue two opposite positions simultaneously.

Earlier I took a sarcastic tone when arguing against the elevation of high intensity interval training as the "best" way to burn fat, esp when it is implied that it is the "only" effective way to burn fat.

Now I have to weigh in against the opposite extreme--the idea that lower-intensity cardio is the "best" and higher intensity training should be avoided.

An excellent review was published in 2009 in the journal Exercise and Sport Science Review. The title is "Exercise improves fat metabolism in muscle but does not increase 24-h fat oxidation". The authors--using literature review and results from their own research--provided convincing evidence that "moderate exercise (<1 hr) has little impact on 24 hr fat oxidation".

They compared 'fat burning" workouts to higher-intensity workouts in both trained and untrained subjects using whole-room indirect calorimetry. What they found was that, regardless of the amount or rate of fat oxidized during the actual exercise workout, when 24 hour fat oxidation was measured, there was no difference in either the percentage of fat burned or the total actual amount of fat oxidized. When subjects burned more "fat" during exercise, they burned less the rest of the day and vice versa.

In addition, there has been a wealth of research over the past 4 years or so, comparing high intensity workout routines with steady-state moderate cardio routines and, under shorter-term, controlled laboratory conditions, HIIT workouts consistently result in greater fat loss than steady-state cardio.

The statement that "you actually burn more fat at lower intensities" just doesn't hold up under the weight of the research evidence.

Having said that, I think it is still way too early to go to the position some have adopted: that HIIT is the "best" and even "only" preferred method for everyone. My reasons are beyond the scope of this comment, so I will just leave it at that.

In my opinion and experience, the "best" long-term approach is a balanced one--a program that includes endurance cardio, empo cardio and HIIT, as well as resistance training. There are different approaches that are appropriate for different individuals at different stages of their journey as well.