Cardio V Weight training for Fat Loss

I'm not anti-cardio, but I am anti-cardio for fat loss.

When you do a workout that’s physically challenging, your body will adapt to the stress making the same workout feel slightly easier the next time.

This is true for a 5k run, or a 20 minute weight training workout.

However, which adaptation is going to be better for your metabolism?

The positive adaptation to cardio is increased aerobic power and improved oxygen capacity. Great for your cardiovascular health.

However, cardio burns a lot of calories and part of the adaptation is to complete the same workout using less calories. To achieve this your body will actually shed muscle tissue, slow itself down and burn less calories, even at rest, reducing your overall metabolism.

During proper resistance training two main adaptations occur. The first one is a strength adaptation where your Central Nervous System learns to activate muscles with organized force. This makes you feel strong, stable, safe and powerful.
The second adaptation is that your muscle fibers grow. Larger muscles use up more energy needing more calories just to maintain itself.

So, with resistance training the primary adaptation is getting stronger. The side effect of that is a faster metabolism that burns more calories – possibly as much as 500 calories a day at rest.

For reference it would take the average person one hour of vigorous cardio activity to burn 500 calories!