The Win On Purpose Podcast

Q&A 3: "Which Is Better For Fat Loss, Weight Training Or Cardio?"

• Adam Kelley

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Can cardio alone genuinely lead to successful fat loss, or is there more to the equation than meets the eye? Join me, Adam Kelly, as we dissect this burning question and challenge the myths surrounding cardio and strength training. This episode of the Win On Purpose podcast is your guide to unraveling the confusion, exploring whether a balanced approach might not just be effective, but essential for sustainable results. By the end, you'll be equipped with practical insights that resonate like advice from a trusted friend, steering you towards a fitness path that aligns with your goals.

Cardio is often celebrated for its heart-pumping benefits, yet when it comes to fat loss, is it really the hero or the hype? Tackling this complex subject, we unpack the science and misconceptions, focusing on how lifestyle factors such as fatigue can skew workout effectiveness. With fitness trackers sometimes overestimating calorie burn by up to 50%, we stress the need for consistent physical activity, rather than just pre-scheduled cardio sessions. The key takeaway? A blend of activities may serve your fitness journey better than singular devotion to cardio.

Let's explore the compelling synergy of strength training and cardio for optimal fat loss. Building muscle not only boosts your metabolic rate but also allows for greater calorie intake while dieting, keeping energy levels high and hunger at bay. A balanced regimen of two to three sessions of each per week is ideal, yet nutrition remains the cornerstone of effective fat loss. Plus, I'm inviting you to participate in an anonymous Q&A session, a chance to ask those lingering health and fitness questions. Together, we'll celebrate intentional actions and personal victories, ensuring that your health journey is both effective and rewarding.

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Speaker 1:

Hey guys, welcome back to the Went On Purpose podcast. In this episode we are doing another question and answer, and the question we are tackling is which is better for fat loss, strength training or cardio? So this is a very good discussion, guys, as there's a lot of confusion over this topic on which one actually works, which one's better or if a overall full spectrum approach is best for us guys. So tune in, check it out. Hope you enjoy and we'll see you on the other side. Welcome to the Win On Purpose podcast. From health and fitness, business, personal development, relationships and more. We promise you will find inspiration to help you win on purpose in all areas of your life journey. And now for your host, adam Kelly what's up guys? What's up world? Welcome back to the Win On Purpose podcast. I appreciate you for taking time out of your day to check us out, hear what I have to say, hear what this is all about, and we want to provide as much value for you as possible, and that's what we do here, guys. We're all about winning on purpose. So, rather, if that's in your health, in your fitness, in your daily activity, if that's in your relationships, your work, your business, career pursuits, your finances, whatever it may be. We want to help support you guys to win on purpose. But, as I've said in previous episodes, the majority of this podcast will be focused on health and fitness, because that is our foundation. That is the grounds of how we feel each and every day, how we feel about ourself, our self-confidence, our energy levels, our sleep quality all these things that have a direct impact into how we win in all other areas of our life. So that's a big focus of ours here, guys. So, with that being said, we have another Q&A episode for you guys. So I really like doing these.

Speaker 1:

If you watch the YouTube versions, which is the video version of the podcast on these, I do these a little bit differently than I do the normal episodes. That's why these aren't numbered with the normal episodes. You know, I think we're on episode when this is released. We should be on episode 12 or 13 of the podcast. So, as you'll notice, I don't number these as a regular podcast. You have the Q&A as its own category because I do it completely different and it's a completely different format than my regular videos, my regular videos.

Speaker 1:

I spend more time doing research, compiling my thoughts together. I'm usually reading off of my screen or reading off of a notepad, based on the notes that I've taken, because I want to be able to present a complete thought to you guys with as much information and especially proof and evidence. I really like statistics because that shows us a lot. So, anyways, that's what those episodes are more geared towards, whereas these Q&A episodes I like to treat these more as if you were just someone off the street that came to me and asked me a question, or if you were a client that had a question, or somebody on social media that messaged me and says, hey, what do you think about this, what do you think about that? And make it more of a non-formal type discussion to where I'm looking at you in the camera as if you were sitting across from me at my desk right now and answer this question based on what I know and what I would recommend to somebody. So there will be some Q&A episodes in which I actually have, you know, paperwork or some notes on my screen that I'm going to look at because I want to go a little bit deeper into that question, but a lot of them are more of just how I would answer you, like I said, if you were to walk into my office or my gym or, if you know, you were to message me on social media. So, with that being said, guys, also, we are here at the Transformed Health Initiative training headquarters. So if you are in the more Oklahoma City metro area and you are looking for a trainer or a coach that can help you reach your goals but not only help you reach your goals, but educate you on how is the best way to create a sustainable life structure in order to not just reach your goals but maintain those results for life, because, as I always say, nobody cares about our results. We care about what we can keep and what we can maintain throughout the years. So, if you're looking for that, we would love to work with you guys. You can sign up at our website, transformhealthcoachcom. You can reach out to me, you can message me, however you're listening or viewing to this podcast or on my social media any of my social media accounts at Coach Adam Kelly and we'd love to get you guys plugged in, start working with you and help you build your best self yet.

Speaker 1:

So, with that being said, what is the question of the day? The question is, which one is better for fat loss, weight training, resistance training, strength training or cardio. Okay, this is a. This is a a lot of sorry, a century long debate and discussion. Okay, you have camps that say you don't need cardio, that if you just lift weights, that that's going to give you all the calorie burn that you need. Everything else comes from nutrition. So you're really wasting your time doing cardio. You have people that say, no, you definitely need some sort of cardio in with your plan to help you burn more calories, to help boost your metabolism, to help with all these different things that people claim. Some may be true, some may not be true. We're going to discuss a little bit here. But what do we do, guys? How do we know what's best? How do we know what direction we should go? How do we know if we are wasting our time or if we're doing those things that are going to actually help us reach our goals, or if we're doing those things that are going to actually help us reach our goals?

Speaker 1:

And if you guys know me anything about me, I am a husband. I am a dad of four kids raging all the way up from about to be 16 tomorrow so almost happy birthday, son down to six years old. So we have a wide range busy, busy life. You know, I'm a business owner, I'm a trainer, a coach you know, friend son, all these different titles and all these different hats that I wear and so I like to make sure that everything that I do and what I teach my clients because most of my clients are like me, at least on some level.

Speaker 1:

As far as busyness and just everything going on in life I like to make sure that things that I'm doing are as efficient and, you know, worth it as possible, because I don't have time to waste. I don't have three hours in the gym every day to spend, you know, doing all the different things that all the different people say I don't have, you know, hours upon hours to spend in the kitchen doing all these crazy meal preps and meal plans. Like, I don't have time for a lot of this stuff. I don't have time to go spend hours of time in the gym on a treadmill or on a elliptical doing cardio. So my goal, with my own health and my own journey, is to find ways to be as efficient and time saving as possible so I can devote more of my time and energy and focus and investment to the people and the things in my life that need it the most. Okay, so that's the same thing I try to do for you guys is to provide you not shortcuts, but more like a direct path to what is actually worth your time. And then maybe, if you you know, like doing things a certain way that maybe is not the most efficient way, that's totally fine. Again, everything is about what's best for the person, but I want to provide you guys with as much as I can so you save time, you save money, you save headaches and you get the best results possible. So which one is better for fat loss? Let's kind of unpack this a little bit. All right, so let's look at both of them individually and then we'll kind of compare the two and then I'll give you my recommendation at the end.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so, number one, let's look at cardio. So is cardio a waste of time? To begin with, a lot of people say that, and I know a lot of the perspectives of why people say that. Some of it makes sense, some of it doesn't really. Some of it's just bro science, which is basically just what sounds good, what people have done. It's not really based on any scientific literature or you know any type of evidence, anything like that. So cardio, well one. We need to know what cardio is.

Speaker 1:

Cardio is short for cardiovascular training. This is basically training that gets your heart rate above a certain rate, a certain beats per minute, and it keeps it there for a certain duration of time. Okay, that's what's considered cardio. So this is why you know, if you are trying to find a way to perform cardio, there's so many different options you can go with and so many different things you can do to increase your heart rate to a certain level and keep it that high. So I typically consider like actual cardio, something where you're around like 60 to 70% of your max heart rate and maintaining that for at least five minutes or more. That's what I would consider cardio. But that can look a lot different for depending on who you talk to. So that's not a rule or anything. That's just what I kind of consider cardio. Anything less than that. I more consider that as just movement. You know, daily activity, not necessarily cardiovascular training.

Speaker 1:

So there's a lot of benefits to cardiovascular training and a lot of reasons why I feel that everybody should have some level of cardiovascular training in their program. And you know, the biggest thing is heart health. Okay, we know that it makes for a healthier heart. We know that it helps with blood circulation. We know that it helps with burning calories. There's lots of good things that come from it, and these are the reasons why we should be focusing on cardio, but as far as a form of fat loss, it's probably not the greatest option.

Speaker 1:

Just because people overestimate how many calories they can actually burn from cardio and a big part of that is one cardio has been pushed for weight loss for so many decades. It's just when people think losing weight, they think cardio. And then also there's Our bodies. Don't really burn a whole lot of calories from cardio training unless you're doing some very intense like HIIT training, high intensity interval training or sprints or something that is like really getting you closer to your max heart rate for extended periods of time. Anything below that, which that has its own toll, that has its own negative effects which we could talk about. But you know, outside of that your basic cardiovascular work, you're not going to burn a whole lot of calories. And another misunderstanding when it comes to that, too, is a lot of people base what their tracker like their phone tracker or their smartwatch the amount of calories it says that they're burning during cardio, and these things can have a big margin of error and actually sometimes we see up to like 50 or more of inaccuracy from these devices. So even, like you know, the the heart rate monitor on the cardio equipment, where you hold it and you hold it for so long and then it tells you your heart rate, it tells you how many calories you're burning those can have a huge level of inerrancy and inaccuracy that we can't really account for. And so this is a big reason why I don't actually prescribe cardio necessarily to my clients. We look at physical activity over that steady daily physical activity, because there's so many variables that can change how many calories are burning per cardio session.

Speaker 1:

This is an example I always give my clients. Say that I assign you three times per week 30 minutes of cardio, okay, and you go say you're choosing Monday, wednesday and Friday to perform these because you want to do it during the week so you can take off the weekend and enjoy the weekend. So let's say, monday you go in and over the weekend you had a really good weekend. You had some time to relax, you got some good sleep, some good high quality food. So you start that Monday. You're super motivated because you had the weekend off from training and cardio. And so you go in there and you just get after it, like you. Let's say, you burn like 300 calories within that 30 minutes, and that's quite a bit of calories within that amount of time. And so you know you had a very good session. You burnt so much body fat, so many calories, right? Well, wednesday comes around. All right.

Speaker 1:

Now let's say, you know it's been a couple of days of the week. You've had a couple of strength training sessions, you know you've had a cardio session, you've had work, you've had all these things going on. Kids are involved and you've been running them around, running them back and forth to school, all these things that you have going on. So now Wednesday comes around and you're a little bit more tired. You don't exactly have as much energy as you started the week with. So you go in there to do your 30 minutes. Now, mind you, you're still doing your cardio, but maybe you only burn like 170, 200 calories during that time because you're just not going at it as hard as you were on Monday when you felt your best. All right. So now we already. You can already see how there's a discrepancy there.

Speaker 1:

Then we come to Friday. Now you've had multiple training, lifting sessions throughout the week, you've had multiple days of running the kids back and forth and sports and activities and all this stuff. You've had a whole week's worth of work under your belt, all these different things. Sleep may have been off, whatever it may be. So now Friday comes along and you're just ready to get the day over with, like you're ready to get your training over with, ready to get your cardio over with, ready to get work over with, so you can enjoy your weekend and recoup and recover and be ready to go hard again Monday. Well, you go in Friday and you only burn 100 calories during that 30 minutes because you're basically just dragging yourself through it, just so you can check that box.

Speaker 1:

So what we have here is, as your trainer, as your coach, I have estimated how many calories I expect you to burn from your cardio each week in order to affect our energy balance. All right, we're increasing our calorie expenditure through our cardio and so if I'm expecting you to burn 300 calories per cardio session, but yet you go from 300 to 170 to 100, you're gonna be burning quite a bit less calories per week than I had originally anticipated and I have already set your food intake based on the amount of calories I'm expecting you to burn. So, as you can see, there, there's going to be a big discrepancy and there's going to be too much variation to know what's actually working. Because I look at your spreadsheet or we do our check-in and you're like, yeah, I didn't lose anything this week. Or my weight's up and I did my cardio, I did my training, I ate my food up and you know, I did my cardio, I did my training, you know I ate my, my food. I don't know what happened. Well, I can't for sure say exactly what it is, even looking at your numbers, because we have so much variation in calorie expenditure.

Speaker 1:

When it comes to your cardio, however, if I assign you a daily step count, which is basically like a minimum of physical activity, now we can gauge this a little bit better, because steps are steps. You can get them anytime throughout the day or night. So many different ways you can get them. You can get other stuff done while you're getting your steps in, like grocery shopping, housework, stuff like that, but it becomes much more measurable. So say I set you for 10,000 steps per day, just for example. Well, if you hit all your steps throughout the week and you're getting at least that 10,000 steps, then this gives me something better that I can look at whenever we do your check-in and I look at your sheet and I say, okay, you know, she hit all of her steps, she got her food in, she got all of her workouts in, this is our result, right. And then I could say, okay, well, let's try increasing steps or maybe decreasing steps if the rate of loss is too fast, and it just gives something more solidified to be able to make adjustments.

Speaker 1:

With same thing with food, you know, if you're, if your calorie intake is all over the place, I can't really say that we need to adjust your diet because I can't really see what your diet's doing. But if you're very consistent with your calorie intake, then all of that consistency shows me okay. Well, if we're not losing like we should be, then maybe we need to bring food down or maybe we need to increase our physical activity, because we have some really good baselines to make that judgment off of. So this is why, again, I don't prescribe cardio training to my clients typically, unless they're athletes, and it's part of what they need for their sport. Outside of that, we usually just go off a step count and daily physical activity, because it's a lot more measurable and trackable and predictable.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so, like I said a lot of times, we don't burn as many calories through cardio as we think that we're going to burn, and we think that we're burning when we perform it. All right, so that's kind of a downside to using just cardio as a way to burn body fat. All right. So, when it comes to strength training, weight training Now, this is also something that's very beneficial for you, that you should be definitely doing, no matter what you're doing, no matter what your goals are. Strength training, resistance training, should be part of your weekly regimen, no matter what guys free examples out there or there's thousands of gyms out there, or there's thousands of us coaches and trainers that would love to help you get started and figure out what's best for you.

Speaker 1:

But, with that being said, is it good for fat loss? Well, it does burn calories, so that's a great thing. All right, and there's some other things that I'm going to touch on that it helps with our calorie expenditure throughout the day as well. So basically, without getting too scientific on you guys, there's an effect that happens whenever we strength train and basically our body is at a higher odds of burning more calories throughout the rest of the day, or at least several hours after our training, and so this is a really good thing, because we don't typically see the same effect from cardio. Typically, with cardio, once your heart rate comes back down, we kind of see a plateau on calorie expenditure from that effort, but when it comes to strength training, we can see a higher amount of calorie expenditure throughout the day due to what I assume to be basically your body just recovering. You know your muscles are starting to recover, you're shuttling nutrients, you know your body is healing, and so this requires calories, it requires energy, just like any other process in the body. So that's a big benefit when it comes to strength training for fat loss.

Speaker 1:

However, we typically most people with strength training unless they're doing some sort of circuit or interval training or you know supersets or drop sets, you know things that you have little rest break. You're doing a lot of output in a short amount of time. Most people are resting quite a bit between sets, which is a good thing because we want muscles to recover so we can push them hard again to get that volume in. But a lot of times we're just kind of sitting in between sets and we're not really increasing our calorie expenditure during that time. So you can probably burn more calories per session in the same amount of time doing cardio, because typically cardio is nonstop during that time. Whereas training you lift for you know 10, 20, 30, 40 seconds, for you know 10, 20, 30, 40 seconds. You rest, you do it again, you rest. So a lot if you're. If you spend an hour doing strength training versus an hour of cardio, probably that hour of cardio is most likely going to burn more calories within that hour as strength training. But again, strength training tends to burn more calories later on throughout the day versus cardio. So maybe that's a trade-off, maybe it balances out, we don't really know. So that's one thing between the two of them.

Speaker 1:

Also, one of the big benefits as far as burning more calories per day when it comes to weight training is the effect of having muscle tissue in general, having more muscle tissue. So muscle tissue is very calorically expensive, meaning it requires a lot of calories to build and maintain muscle mass, and so the more muscle mass you have, the more calories your body is going to be burning all day long. So when you're sleeping, when you're resting, when you're driving, when you're sitting, when you're working out all the things that you do on a 24 hour period the more muscle mass you have, the more calories your body's going to burn within that time just to maintain that muscle mass. So this can be a huge benefit because, say, if you are trying to lose 50 pounds and you're only utilizing cardio and you've never really done strength training, you're here, you're arresting metabolic rate, or your BMR, your basal metabolic rates, basically how many calories your body burns before you do any type of movement, where it's just keeping the lights on, keeping you know, your internal organs working, all these things without any physical activity. Um, and we see an increase in this as you build more muscle. So, again, by doing nothing, by default you're burning more calories per day than you would with less muscle.

Speaker 1:

So this is why I am a huge proponent of strength training when it comes to fat loss, because the more muscle tissue we have, the easier it's going to be to lose weight, the more food we'll be able to eat while dieting, which one helps with satiety helps with hunger, so it keeps hunger in check. Better helps with energy. We have more energy the more food we eat generally, especially when it's coming from healthy options, and you know it's just. It's better all the way. You feel better. We see better diet adherence when there's higher calories. We see better diet adherence when there's higher calories. We see less burnout. We see less backsliding and regressing and putting weight back on after a diet when you can eat for more calories, especially when you can end a diet with more calories.

Speaker 1:

If you end a diet and you're barely eating anything, you're going to be ravishly hungry, especially when you start reintroducing calories and reintroducing food. And this leads to that regain phase where people gain back just as much weight or more weight, because their body is so depleted and their metabolism is taking such a big hit. Once they start reintroducing all this food, their metabolism isn't handling it well. They have a much higher rate, higher probability of storing these extra calories as body fat and just undoing all the work that they did. So definitely something we don't want.

Speaker 1:

So, as you can see, I gave you guys benefits for fat loss for both options, all right. So what does this mean? What is the practical application here. My recommendation when it comes to what's best for fat loss is, as usual, the best of both worlds. Okay, having some strength training and having some cardio training, all right. So what can this look like? I would say, on average, two to three times of weight training per week will get you all the gains that you need.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you want to build more muscle maybe you want to build muscle a little bit faster, you want to increase strength a little bit faster, or you just really like lifting then you can do more than two to three times in the gym or two to three days of weight resistance training. However, if you train each muscle group about two times, three times per week, you're going to get very, very good growth. You're going to increase strength, you're going to feel a lot better and you're going to raise your metabolism, your basal metabolic rate, by adding this extra muscle tissue on. And then we couple that with the calorie expenditure that comes from our cardio training, but not just that, because, again, that's more on the smaller level than, say, doing it through your nutrition. But we also get the heart benefits, we get the you know, the blood flow benefits. We get all these other benefits that have nothing to do with fat loss that are going to help us feel better and help us look better by the end of our fat loss phase. And help us look better by the end of our fat loss phase.

Speaker 1:

Okay, especially when you know if you tend to get winded easy when you're doing different activities, if you add some cardio training in your program, that's going to help with that situation. You're not going to get as winded going up the stairs, you're not going to get as winded playing with your kids, things like that, and again, you're improving your heart health, which we know will help improve how long you live and the quality of life that you have. So again, we want the best of both worlds, combining the two together. So, when it comes to cardiovascular training, same thing about two to three days per week on average will do you very well. So say you did three days of weight training, two days of cardio, or you did two days of weight training, three days of cardio. This still gives you your five-day training split or your five-day activity split. You still have your two days on the weekend to rest and spend time with family and get stuff done and whatever you do on the weekends and you know that you're covering all bases and you're getting as much calorie burn as possible, because you're getting the calorie burn from strength training and the afterburn effects and the increased resting or basal metabolic rate, and those are interchangeable terms. That's why I keep saying both resting metabolic rate and basal metabolic rate are the exact same thing. So you're getting all that benefit and then you're getting, you know, the like I said, you're getting calorie burn from both options.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and this is really really probably the best case scenario. Okay, so that's what I suggest. But the biggest thing to take from this, guys, is we're actually looking at the wrong things when it comes to fat loss. Although these are a part of the picture, and I'll give you a big part, you know it's a big part of the picture. This is just a part and it's not the biggest part of the picture.

Speaker 1:

If you truly want to maximize fat loss and minimize muscle loss, that is to combine your strength training and your cardiovascular training with proper nutrition. Proper nutrition is the pillar for fat loss. You cannot lose body fat if you are eating in a calorie surplus, regardless if you're strength training and doing cardio or not. Now, mind, you can have some body recomposition, go on where you lose some body fat, you gain some muscle. If you're doing these things but truly making a difference in the amount of body fat that you have in your health, it's going to be your nutrition, guys. This is so important. It's the one that we like to dance around, because it's easier to go do cardio for an hour or go strength train for an hour and then just live the rest of your life. But eating is always part of our life. Food is always around us. That is a 24 hour job that we have seven days a week and that's our eating habits.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so if you're focused only on strength training and cardio work to lose body fat and you're not paying attention to your nutrition, you don't know how much you're eating, you're overeating calories, you're going to be just like a hamster running in a wheel and you're never going to actually get to your goals. Okay, so you want to make sure that you have a solid nutrition plan, that you at least know what you're eating and if you don't want to track, if you don't want to, you know to to track your macros and your calories and things like that then at least eating a very healthy, well-balanced diet and not overeating. Listening to your hunger cues, listening to your body, you know mindful eating things like that this is really where you're going to get the fat burn happening in your program, okay, and then your strength training and your cardiovascular training will complement your nutrition, and then you add those three pieces together and then I'm going to add the fourth, which is probably just as important as the rest, is your sleep. So you add strength training, cardiovascular training, good nutrition and quality sleep and you literally have found the cheat code to reaching all of your goals in the best way possible, guys. So make sure that we're looking at things from the big picture, that we're not singling out any one specific thing, because you can have very good nutrition, but if you're not strength training and doing cardiovascular training, you're not going to feel your. But if you're not strength training and doing cardiovascular training, you're not going to feel your best and you're definitely not going to look your best. And if your sleep is off, it doesn't matter if the other three are golden, you're not going to feel your best and you're definitely not going to look your best.

Speaker 1:

So focus on all four of these. You don't need to get crazy super specific, just like with the general recommendation as far as strength training and cardiovascular training. Same thing with nutrition. It's not about being perfect, it's not about having everything right. It's about being consistent. It's about making those good choices that we know we need to make. Everybody knows that they need protein. Everybody knows that fruits and vegetables are healthy. Everybody should know that good quality, low processed whole grains are good for you. Fiber is good for you. So, eating the things that we know we need to eat and then also getting adequate quality sleep each and every night, if possible. That is the remedy that you want. Okay, in order to lose fat, the best, all right, it's the full picture that we're after all, right.

Speaker 1:

So I hope this Q&A was beneficial for you. I hope it helped you. If you guys have any questions that you want answered now one, you can reach out to me directly and I will answer your question right away. It does give me a good topic in order to do a Q&A episode over, because most of us have the same questions. If you have a question and you want to know something more, I guarantee you there's probably thousands of people out there that have the same questions and need the same answers.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So I would much rather take from you guys and not just the questions that I would have and that I've had in the past, but also the questions I've been asked. But take the questions that you guys have and then that way I can help more people because, like I said, most of us have a lot of the same questions. So if you guys have questions, please let me know. I will never shout out unless you just say hey, I really want you to say my name on the podcast and that it was my question.

Speaker 1:

Outside of that, I'm not going to put you on blast. I'm not going to tell anybody who you are. It's completely anonymous. But if you want a question answered, reach out to me guys and then, if you know hey, I know that a lot of people probably have this question or I've been asked this question. I didn't know how to answer it Reach out to me guys, let me know. I would love to cover in a q a episode and I'd love to answer your question directly. So I appreciate you guys for the love and support. Let's make sure we crush it this week and, whatever we do, make sure we do something good for yourself, something good for your health, something good for those you care about, and, whatever you do, make sure you win on purpose. All right, guys, we'll catch you on the next episode.