Ep. #215: Is Weightlifting or Cardio Best for Weight Loss?

[00:00:00] Hey, this is Mike and welcome to another installment in my in five minutes or less series, where I answer one common question quickly and simply, because while long form content is great, sometimes it is also nice when someone just gets right to the point and tells you what to do and how to do it in five minutes or less.

And that’s what I do in these episodes. In this video slash podcast, I’m going to answer a question that I get fairly often, which is what is better for weight loss, weightlifting or cardio? And the short answer is cardio. Cardio is better for weight loss than weightlifting. This has been demonstrated in a number of studies.

There’s no question. But that doesn’t mean that you should be doing a bunch of cardio when you’re cutting because although you might say That you want to [00:01:00] lose weight What you really want and what you really mean to say is that you want to lose fat and not muscle because that’s how you improve your body composition.

That’s how you in the end look the way that you want to look That’s how you avoid winding up skinny fat. And when that’s your goal, now weightlifting is much better than cardio. In fact, weightlifting, or at least some form of resistance training, is the only way to preserve as much muscle as possible when you’re cutting or even gain muscle.

Depending on where you’re at in your training experience, and despite what you might have heard, weightlifting can also be quite good for losing fat. Most people think that if you wanna lose fat, you have to do cardio. If you want to gain muscle, you have to lift weights. That’s not true. In fact, cardio, at least by itself, is not a very effective weight loss routine.

Studies have shown that many people [00:02:00] lose very little weight with a cardiovascular exercise routine, and in fact some people wind up even fatter than when they began, and there are a few reasons for this. The first is that many people don’t understand genetics. dieting. At least I don’t understand proper dieting.

They don’t understand energy balance. They don’t understand macronutrient balance. And so that of course makes it very hard to lose weight in the first place. Because if you don’t know what a calorie deficit is, for example, you’re going to struggle to lose weight. But when you combine that with the fact that cardiovascular exercise, especially low intensity steady state, like LISS, L A S, cardio.

Or even just medium intensity cardio often makes people hungrier. So then in the end, what they’re doing is burning some calories, exercising, and then just overeating. And of course that again is not good for weight loss and can lead to weight gain. Many people also don’t realize just how easy it is to eat back all of the calories that you burn during cardio.

[00:03:00] So for example, if a 150 pound person goes for a 30 minute run, they’ll burn somewhere around 400 calories. And that might sound like a large number, but in reality, if you ate a handful of nuts and maybe a cup of yogurt and an apple, there you go, 400 calories. Or if you ate a medium sized taco ship cookie with a little bit of milk, there you go.

400 calories, pretty easy to eat back. Now, of course, my point isn’t that you shouldn’t eat nuts, yogurt, apples, or cookies. If you’re dieting, it’s just that if you don’t understand the fundamentals of dieting, it can make it very hard to accidentally maintain a calorie deficit and therefore accidentally lose weight.

Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the because no amount of marketing or Advertising [00:04:00] gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth, so if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it.

It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at MuscleForLifeFitness, Twitter at MuscleForLife, and Facebook at MuscleForLifeFitness. Another reason why just doing cardio isn’t a great weight loss strategy is your body adapts to the exercise to reduce its caloric expenditure.

So studies show that when you’re in a calorie deficit, when you are eating fewer calories than you are burning. burning, which is of course necessary. If you are going to lose fat, your body strives to increase its energy efficiency. It’s striving to reduce the size of that deficit and ultimately to erase it.

It wants to achieve that [00:05:00] state of energy homeostasis where input is matching output. And one of the ways that it does this is it increases energy efficiency in exercise. So the more you continue to do the same types of exercise and the same types of workouts, the less energy those workouts will burn over time.

So those are a few of the reasons why I recommend that people do really as little cardio as necessary when they’re cutting. And I recommend that they focus the majority Of their exercise efforts on weightlifting or at least some form of resistance training instead And if you really want to maximize fat loss, you do both.

You lift weights and you do cardio and that cardio could be really whatever you enjoy. But if you want to get the most fat burning out of the least amount of cardio, then of course you do high intensity interval training. And if you don’t want to [00:06:00] do high intensity interval training, then I recommend you actually go to the other end of the difficulty spectrum and go with the easiest form of cardio, which is.

Walking, which actually burns a bit more energy than people realize. If you walk at a decent pace, you don’t have to be power walking, but you don’t also want to just be barely shuffling your feet. If you’re walking with intention, let’s say you’re going to burn somewhere between depending on your body weight, you’re going to burn depending.

And also depending on the terrain, you’re 400 calories per hour. That’s not bad. So if you combine a few hours of walking per week with let’s say three to five hours of resistance training per week. That is really the sweet spot for maximizing fat loss and maximizing muscle preservation and even possibly muscle gain.

And this has been shown in multiple studies. For example, one study was conducted by scientists at Duke university. And in this study, they recruited [00:07:00] 196 men and women ranging from 18 to 70 years old and they split them into a few groups. Groups. So one group was a resistance training only group. And what they did is three resistance training workouts lasted about an hour, 24 sets, whole body using machines, simple stuff.

The other group was the aerobic training group. This was the cardio only group. They went for three moderate intensity, 45 minute jogs per week. And then there was a third group who did both of the workouts. So they did both the resistance training and the cardio for a grand total of about five hours of exercise per week.

So this study went on for eight months, which is a long study. That’s a good duration. This is not a four week or even a 10 week study. It was an eight month study. And at the end of it, what scientists found is that the cardio only group, the aerobic Only group lost the most weight, but they also lost a fair amount of muscle.

And in fact, they were the only group to lose muscle. The [00:08:00] resistance training group, the people who just did the resistance training workouts, they lost no muscle to speak of, and neither did the resistance training plus muscle group. Cardio. Plus aerobic group. They lost no muscle as well. And in fact, group number three, the resistance training and aerobic training group not only lost the most fat, they actually gained muscle.

So they recalmed. And that study is not an anomaly either. It is in line with several other studies in the matter. And the weight of the evidence here is clear. If you want to lose fat as quickly as possible, while also preserving muscle or even gaining muscle, then you really want to be doing resistance training.

You can do cardio as well, but you want to make sure that you’re doing resistance training. And I would say that if you only had time, For one or the other, go with resistance training over cardio because resistance training workouts burn quite a few calories. They are not as ineffective for [00:09:00] fat loss as many people think.

And especially when you focus on heavy compound weightlifting because those are the type of workouts that burn the absolute most calories. Energy and most stimulate the major muscle groups in your body. So they are the ones that are most conducive to muscle building and strength gain. And just to be specific there by heavy, I mean working with weights somewhere between 75 percent and 85 percent of your one rep max.

So that would be like the eight to 10 rep range at the high end. And maybe the four to six rep range at the low end. And in terms of compound exercises, I’m talking about exercises that involve multiple joints, multiple major muscle groups like the squat, the deadlift, the bench press, the overhead press, as opposed to isolation exercises, which usually only involve one joint and isolate and emphasize just one major muscle group like the bicep curl or the side lateral rate.

So that’s it short and sweet. If you want to maximize [00:10:00] fat loss in. Maximize muscle preservation and even muscle gain, then you want to be doing a few hours of heavy resistance training per week, anywhere from three to five hours, depending on various things, your personal circumstances, your ultimate goals, your training history, blah, blah, blah.

But let’s just say a few hours of heavy compound weightlifting per week. In terms of cardio, I recommend no more than two hours per week. If you’re doing high intensity interval training. And I recommend that you separate those into shorter workouts. So 20, 25 minute HIIT workouts no more than two hours of HIIT per week.

And if you’re just walking, you can get away with a bit more. You could do probably four or five hours a week of walking with no issues. And lastly, of course, you need to also maintain a fairly. It’s a very aggressive calorie deficit, which is really what drives all of this, of course. And by that, I would say a 20 to 25 percent deficit.

That’s my general recommendation. If you’re very overweight, you can get away with a slightly larger deficit, but most of us are going to do best with about a 20 to 25 percent [00:11:00] deficit. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did and don’t mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you’re listening from.

This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility. And thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won’t miss out on any of the new goodies.

Lastly, if you didn’t like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscle for life. com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I’m always looking for constructive feedback. So please do reach out. All right, that’s it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to [00:12:00] hear from you soon.

And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in, so instead I’m going to just quickly tell you about something of mine. Specifically by flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef. Now, this book has sold over 200, 000 copies in the last several years and helped thousands of men and women get the bodies they really want, eating the types of food they really love, which is why it has over 700 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average.

So if you want to know how to build your best body ever without having to follow a boring bland, overly restrictive bodybuilding diet. And if you want 125 of my personal favorite recipes for building muscle, losing fat and getting healthy, then you want to pick up the shredded chef today, which you can find on all major online retailers like Amazon, Audible.

[00:13:00] iTunes, Kobo, and Google play. Now, speaking of audible, I should also mention that you can actually get the audio book 100 percent free when you sign up for an audible account, which I highly recommend that you do. If you are not currently listening to audio books, I love them myself because they let me make the time that I spend doing stuff like commuting, prepping food, walking my dog and so forth into more valuable and productive activities.

So if you want to take Audible up on this offer and get my book for free, then simply go to www.bitlybitly.com/free tsc, and that will take you to Audible and then you just click the sign up today and save button, create your account. And voila, you get to listen to the Shredded Chef for free.