Conventional wisdom has told us for decades that the concept of cardio for fat loss is crucial towards any understanding of real and legitimate weight loss success. It’s a great stepping-stone, but it lacks focus. There is no doubt that the cardiovascular exercises you see at step classes, kenpo and zumba pose a plethora of benefits for your heart, lungs and general vitality, but there is so much more to weight loss -and specifically fat loss- that everyone must be aware of.
Let’s take a look at precisely how cardio for fat loss works and how it, when paired with the following important habits, can actually accelerate your weight loss and fat loss potential.
Eating Plenty of Healthy Food
Fat loss requires a successful transformation on two fronts: your physical activities and your eating habits. The most common mistake people make when trying to lose weight is a failure to eat a sufficient amount of food to burn the fat they want to lose. Fat loss is, in so many words, the process of your metabolism breaking down fats. Metabolic rates can only increase when there is a consistent and nutritionally dense intake of food throughout the day. The generally recommended diet involves 5-meals per day at 350-450 calories each, approximately three hours apart.
Strength Training
Consciously incorporating cardio into any weight loss plan makes strength training even more essential to ensuring that layers of fat become replaced by lean muscle. If muscle development, in the form of strength training, ceases to become a priority, the cardio exercises will resort to burning off muscle as well, leaving the body lighter, but much looser and less than ideal.
Long Duration and/or HIIT
Up until recently, it had been thought that cardio’s maximum benefits are met only through prolonged low-intensity exercise. Today, more and more studies are revealing that short High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) bring about the same (and sometimes better) results.
Each form has its own advantages and disadvantages, so sometimes people are better suited for one over the other given the state of their physical fitness. For example, a newcomer to cardio who has a body fat percentage over 25% would gain the most benefit from elongated low-intensity workouts to develop their body’s athleticism. Most people are prepared for HIIT by the time they’re able to leg press 150% of their body weight for at least 6 reps.
This article only taps the surface of the incredibly vast world of using cardio for fat loss. The good news is that it is one of the fastest growing trends in the realm of fitness, so the wealth of knowledge on the topic will continue to increase.