What Type of Cardio Will Develop a Shapely Body?
The secret to weight loss is very simple: burn more calories than you take in! And maintenance is simply equalizing calories in with calories out. The main objective when you want to be shapely is to burn fat and keep it off.
There are some people these days who say cardio is a waste of time and you should only work with weights. I disagree because:
* I prefer to work my entire body with weights in one session, so I should wait 48 hours before doing it again.
* I like to exercise most days to boost my mood, relieve stress and give me energy.
* All exercise burns calories, which means I can eat more!
So, since I like to exercise on most days, I need to do cardio on the days when I don’t lift weights.
The next controversy is the type of cardio. Is high intensity better, or moderate intensity?
Some people say that during moderate intensity exercise, a larger percentage of the calories you burn comes from fat, so you should stick with moderate intensity. But high intensity exercise burns more total calories, so even if the percentage of calories from fat is lower, the total fat calories burned is about the same for the same length of time. So, I like higher intensity because it burns more total calories and seems to boost my progress more.
A nice alternative is interval training, where you have short bursts of high intensity followed by lower intensity moves to recover. (more…)