Cardio and Fat Loss

Interesting article.

http://nerdfitness.com/blog/2010/02/01/what-burns-more-calories-cardio-intervals-or-weight-training/

Some key points.

They compared Cardio, HIT, and Weight training against each other.

The continuous group exercised for 40 minutes at a consistent rate. At the end of the study, the women in the interval group had lost three times the body fat as the women in the continuous exercise group. (An interesting note: the interval group’s loss in body fat came mostly from the legs and buttocks area.)

The weight training group lost 21.1 pounds of fat (44% and 35% more than diet and aerobic only groups respectively). Basically, the addition of aerobic training didn’t result in any real world significant fat loss over dieting alone.

KEY POINTS AT THE END:

Do cardio if:

You really enjoy the treadmill or elliptical, or you just really like running
You have all the time in the world
You’re just getting started and don’t really know what you’re doing

Do HIIT if:

You don’t like lifting weights, but you still want to burn calories as quickly as possible
You only have a limited amount of time every day
You like pushing your body to its limits.

Do circuit weight training if:

You want to build muscle while burning calories
You like burning calories while sitting on your butt.
You’re not afraid of lifting weights.

Edit - said a search Tony Horton - P90X

That's him! I'm currently doing P90X and I love it (there isn't enough cardio there so I do my 15min elliptical HIIT).

According to Mayo Clinic:

According to Mayo Clinic.com, a 160-pound person performing a weight lifting workout uses 219 calories per hour. However, a 240-pound exerciser expends 327 calories an hour doing the same workout.

A 160-pound person who jogs for an hour uses 584 calories, while the 240-pound exerciser uses 872 calories per hour, according to MayoClinic.com. By session, cardiovascular workouts clearly burn more calories than weightlifting exercise.
Post-Exercise Burn

"While it is evident that cardiovascular exercise burns more calories than lifting weights, the amount of calories burned after weight training is higher," reports the CTER Eportfolio System website. Metabolism increases after cardiovascular exercise only lasts 30 to 60 minutes on average, whereas post weight training metabolism increases up to 48 hours.

There was a controlled study done in NC a few years ago where male participants were fed a controlled diet and exercised (exercise bikes were used) in controlled intervals of 45 min. 100% of the participants had an afterburn. The average time of increased metabolism was 14 hours. I can't remember who did the study but I'm sure you can Google it if you are interested.

Maybe so but the Mayo clinic did a pretty large study and it showed a large increase in the afterburn from those who did weights vs those who did straight cardio. In return did a large increase in weight loss.

I think as with everything you want to do both, you don't want to strain you body lifting every day and I like to do a bit of cardio during those days. Get the best of both worlds that way.