Certainly there are many people who only do weights and no cardio and probably just as many, maybe more that do cardio and no weight training.
It’s true that lots of people hate cardio exercise but not everyone does. Lots of people absolutely love it – even really high intensity cardio. To say everyone loves weight training is just as incorrect.
Not everyone enjoys weight training; otherwise nearly everyone would be doing it. They might enjoy going through the motions of weight training and using light weights but that’s not real muscle building weight training. Don’t get me wrong, it’s better that people at least did light resistance training than none at all, but weight training that builds strength and muscle requires that the muscles be progressively overloaded. That means heavier weight or more reps or slower reps to increase the intensity of the weight training exercise.
Likewise, when it comes to cardio exercise, the cardio exercise that produces the results is the type that gets you breathing hard, your heart pumping and your endurance muscles tiring. This is the level of cardio referred to when people say they hate cardio.
Anything less is generally what you see all those fat people in the gym doing while they’re pedalling away on the exercise bikes.
As for cardio making you hungry, well so does weight training.
Now it is true that you can lose weight without cardio. You can also lose weight without resistance exercise. You can also lose weight without fancy fad diets. All you really need is a calorie deficit. In other words, expend more calories than you eat. Everyone knows the easiest way to achieve that is by cutting the food intake. This of course has the danger of the body slipping into starvation mode and the lowering of the metabolism, thus making weight loss even harder and future weight gain more likely.
To counter this of course, weight training can be used to stimulate the metabolism and preserve, maybe even build the lean muscle tissue.
It should be abundantly clear by now that starvation diets are definitely NOT the best way to lose weight healthily and permanently.
The best approach to achieving the required calorie deficit is to increase activity to burn more energy. Any increase in activity whether by cardio exercise of weight training exercise will result in you wanting to eat more.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Eating more requires that more energy be expended to digest the food. If you follow the rule of eating your food over 4-6 smaller but more frequent meals, you will be increasing your metabolic rate, which of course increases the fat burning even when not exercising.
Eating proteins and complex carbohydrates which take more energy to digest helps as well. Plenty of water is important for fat metabolism as well so there are many factors which come into play.
Basically though if you exercise more you eat more, you gain more muscle, burn more fat and get healthier more efficiently.
There will always be a procession of so called ‘experts’ who make some sensational claim like build great abs in 5 minutes a day or lose weight without cardio or by drinking some special formula. Their sensational claims are designed to suck in the confused, misinformed and desperate dieters who want everything the easiest way possible.
In answer to the question, ‘should we forget about cardio?’ the answer is a resounding NO.
Any cardio helps create the caloric deficit by burning off energy. High intensity cardio burns even more and also helps raise the metabolism. Also, how can we ignore the other health benefits derived from cardio exercise?
The human body is designed for work. That means strength workouts with weights and cardio-vascular workouts that strengthen the heart and lungs. Such work means greater health and longevity.
Weights rule – but cardio exercise is a winning partner. Hand in hand they take the podium together.
Alwyn Beikoff ([http://www.BodyMindUnlimited.com]) is an educator and personal performance coach who helps people the world over to change the way they think and create the body and life they desire.
