First off, as most of us have heard, DIET IS KEY.
But in terms of using our workouts to add in weight loss and body recomposition, building muscle is oh so freaking important.
And cardio? Especially endurance cardio?
Well it can be catabolic to muscle tissue. AKA cause you to struggle to gain, and even RETAIN, muscle mass. Not to mention, your body ADAPTS which means you'll stop burning as many calories from your endurance runs as you once did! So over time unless you find a way to progress those runs (running faster or further), you won't see the same results from your training.
It's why you may have lost weight training for your first race, but don't seem to be getting the same results training for your second, third, or fifteenth!
Guess what ACTUALLY helps you lose fat?
INCREASING YOUR MUSCLE MASS!
Guess what ACTUALLY helps you look leaner as you lose weight?
INCREASING YOUR MUSLCE MASS!
Because muscle increases the calories you burn even at rest, helping to expedite your results from dialing in your nutrition.
Now what about working in that magical “Fat Burning Zone?”
If you’re burning more fat by doing that LISS or low intensity steady state cardio, of course you would want to at least include some form of that, right?!
While LISS does have it’s benefits, and I believe a great one is stress relief when you’re out for a walk with friends, it does not actually, truly burn more fat than interval training or even weight lifting workouts.
The MYTH of the Fat Burning Zone arose from the fact that, of the calories you burn, you burn a higher percentage of calories from fat when you do this steady-state cardio.
Now you may be thinking…”But I thought it was a myth!?! You just said you DID burn more fat!”
Take a look at what I truly said – You burn a higher percentage of calories from fat.
So if you burned 100 calories, when doing steady state cardio, you may burn 50% from fat. Whereas of that same 100 calories, you would only burn 35% from fat if you did a higher intensity cardio workout.
However, here is the reason that magical Fat Burning Zone is a myth…You also burn FEWER calories doing LISS.
Doing a higher intensity workout is going to results in a higher calorie burn and often even do so in less time.
35% of 200 calories burned results in more fat burned than 50% of 100…
So if your ultimate goal is burning fat, increasing your intensity, aka NOT working in that Fat Burning Zone, can result in even more fat burned during your workout.
It’s key that we don’t just think of cardio as steady-state endurance activities, but as a spectrum that we work across.
We need to include workouts that are not only cardio but also build strength so we can build that lean muscle that will help us burn more calories at rest and have a GREATER impact on our weight loss results!