You may see cardio and weights as two distinct types of exercise, but when you put them together, you have the most powerful combination for fat loss success. One of the perennial questions about exercise for weight loss (fat loss) is whether to concentrate on aerobic exercise (cardio) or weight training and resistance exercise. Let's settle this right up front: You should do both, concurrently, for the best outcome. It makes sense, and it is what most healthy people do to get a lean body with muscle definition.
Fat Loss With Continuous Movement
Scientific studies pop up from time to time showing a certain level of fat loss with cardio versus weights—and for the most part, cardio outperforms weights in any reasonable comparison. There is no secret to this because continuous movement at a reasonably demanding intensity and volume will always outperform intermittent exercise, even at high intensity, and even accounting for the afterburn. Ultimately, you need to do both. Here's how it works.
Advantages of Weights for Fat Loss
Strength and resistance training builds muscle. Muscle has a higher metabolic rate than fat so having more muscle raises your resting metabolic rate (energy expenditure) a little compared to having more body fat. However, the differences are not dramatic. Even at the high end of predictions (which are disputed), it is less than a few dozen calories per day for each pound of muscle increased. That helps, but it's not life-changing.
Even so, in a weight loss program, weight training is important to help maintain muscle. When you lose weight it tends to be a combination of fat and muscle. You want to lose the fat but hold onto the muscle for the reasons described above. Weight training helps you achieve this, and has many other benefits for health and performance, besides building extra muscle.
If extra muscle does not provide that much advantage in energy expenditure, what about the afterburn, long touted as an advantage of weight training? The afterburn, is the amount of energy you use after you stop exercising. This is another way of saying your metabolism increases for several hours or longer after an exercise session. Exercise scientists call this afterburn effect EPOC, which stands for excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. The thing is, afterburn happens when you exercise at higher intensities—greater than about 75 percent of maximum heart rate—whether it's weights or cardio. However, you need to be able to sustain that intensity, which means a lot of hard work.
Advantages of Cardio for Fat Loss
The main advantage of aerobic exercise at moderate intensities is that you can do it continuously for much longer than the intermittent exercise of lifting weights. It is this non-stop movement that gives cardio an inherent advantage in energy expenditure during an exercise session.
You can mix weights and movement in circuit training sessions to provide that extra boost, but movement is the key. If you move fast enough to the point where you are running or cycling at around 80 percent of maximum heart rate, you will get some afterburn as well. That's why most comparisons show cardio to be superior to traditional weight training for energy expenditure.
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