if you want to lose fat you'll want to use your exercise time efficiently. So
you might be wondering whether high intensity interval training or LESS,
which is low intensity steady state, is better cardio for you. There's also
something called moderate intensity continuous training which is used in the
research. I'll go through what the latest research says about cardio and fat loss
and there's actually two very interesting studies that came out in
2021 that give us a very good idea of what type of cardio is best for fat loss.
At the end i'm going to help you decide what form of cardio is right for you. And I'm going to tell you what i do myself as well. All forms of cardio are
beneficial for your health. We should all be moving more often than we are. The two
studies that I'm going to talk about compared high-intensity interval
exercise with MICT which is moderate intensity continuous training. They were
meta-analyses which means that both of the studies were going through
other studies that were done prior to evaluate for quality. And then comparing
all the high quality studies and trying to determine what the evidence actually
says. The first study they looked at fat loss and they also looked at markers of
health. Not surprisingly high intensity interval exercise was shown to be more
effective at increasing cardiorespiratory fitness and
cardiovascular health. But moderate intensity continuous training was shown
to be better at improving long-term glucose metabolism. I'm going to go into
a little bit more detail in the second study because there's some interesting
stuff there about fat loss. This one was called "slow and steady or hard and fast".
There are a couple of different ways of doing HIIT training. You can either go
fully all out (sometimes that's considered sprint training) and then you
completely stop. Or you can just go to a slower pace so if you're doing this on a
bike (which is for me a highly recommended form of way of losing fat
with minimal risk) you're sprinting all out by pedaling as hard as you can
really getting the heart rate up and then you slow it down to a slow pedaling
speed. Just to allow the heart rate to recover. When you're ready you push it
back up again. You can do these as timed intervals or you can just do this
according to your own recovery. So when you're ready you just push yourself
again. Now here we come to the main findings of this study. HIIT and MICT were
virtually identical in the amount of fat loss. Adherence to the exercise program
was similar in both conditions. So often we think that people are going to have a
harder time doing HIIT because it's more challenging than steady state.
They're more likely to stick to that. But what's not actually shown in the
evidence. People are just as likely to stick to a HIIT program as they are a
steady state cardio program. This is a little bit surprising. Enjoyment was
relatively similar. So you might think that people don't want to do interval
training and enjoy steady state more because it feels easier. But in fact it
looks like there's a slight edge when it comes to enjoyment for interval training
compared to steady state cardio but they are pretty much the same, at least in the
studies that were analyzed. And that brings us to another major finding which
is that HIIT accomplishes the same result in less than half the time. But it
requires a harder level of exertion. And not everybody's willing to do that. You
have to push yourself more and a lot of people can't do that on their own and
some people don't have the fitness level or the mental toughness to do it...
especially at the beginning when they might not be aware of what their actual
fitness level is or what they're able to do. The increase in fat-free mass was
almost nothing for either of the types of cardio. This is further evidence that
cardio activity is really not that great for putting on muscle. You're not adding
lean mass. You're simply losing body fat. So if you're only doing cardio and
you're expecting to build muscle that way, it likely won't work. And the last
finding the study is a little bit disheartening but I'll tell you how it
can apply to you. The absolute amount of fat loss is relatively small. So this is
starting to add to the research that shows that exercise on its own is not an
ideal fat loss solution. There are many ways that it's beneficial and it's been
shown that people who do engage in exercise are more likely to maintain
weight loss over the long term, when you're looking at two or three years
down the line. It's often a measure of lifestyle adherence if someone's
exercising they tend to stick with their diet as well. But if we just isolate fat
loss on its own from exercise, we find that the results are not as effective as
we might think. The overall conclusion was that structured exercise only has
minor effects on fat loss regardless of intensity of effort and duration when
performed at relatively modest doses the amount of exercise required to achieve
practically meaningful changes in this outcome seems to be unrealistic for most
individuals. So the conclusion there is something that i've been trying to put
into my videos recently is that dietary restriction getting into a calorie
deficit and following a diet that gets you burning off fat is actually the best
strategy for fat loss. But we're also hoping that you want to improve your
health and cardio is a big part of that. Here's my takeaway from all this
research: do whatever cardio works for you whatever you enjoy and that you're
going to stick to, so whether it's jogging or sprinting or cycling or Zumba.
It doesn't really matter just get yourself out there get yourself moving.
And keep burning those calories however you can. If walking is all you can do
that's great go ahead and do the walking. Over time you might be able to walk a
little bit faster and then you don't have to walk as long to burn the same
amount of calories. Although there is some adaptation over a period of time. So
you're going to burn fewer calories as you get fitter. You can walk longer or
you can walk faster. As long as you do it consistently with sufficient duration
and intensity then you're gonna get the benefits for your health and a moderate
amount of fat loss as well. The more you do the more fat loss you'll get even if
it is relatively minor. Remember that the studies use moderate intensity
continuous training and not low intensity steady state, so that would be
just a slightly higher intensity. And we can probably assume that the fat loss
benefits of low intensity cardio are going to be even lower than moderate
intensity, if you're doing them for the same duration. But if you compare high
intensity interval training with low intensity steady state then you'll
probably find that that's just going to require a longer duration. So if you're
doing lower intensity you just have to go for a little bit longer and then
you're going to get similar fat burning effects. We already said high intensity
interval training is going to take you less than half the time of moderate
intensity. In order to get the result so low intensity steady state would take
you even longer to get the same result. One important finding that I thought was
quite interesting. There was no real difference in adverse outcomes (which
basically means injury)
coming from that training. So whether the subjects were doing high intensity
interval training or moderate intensity there was no real difference in injury
and the injury rates were extremely low so most forms of cardio are perfectly
safe some people would rather do their workout quicker but push themselves a
little bit harder other people would rather take their time or they just
don't feel comfortable pushing themselves which one are you it's fine
to stick to moderate or even lower intensity cardio for my clients I
usually work with them to decide what's going to be best for them. If they've
been training for a while and they're super comfortable and they want to have
a bit of a challenge then high intensity interval training can be quite useful
and enjoyable as well a lot of the things that i do for cardio like
mountain biking or downhill skiing or martial arts naturally incorporate some
interval training into them but i don't really need to time anything i just try
to push myself occasionally if i'm feeling up for it so i don't concern
myself much with the fat loss benefits of the activity i find that when i'm
more active i tend to stay leaner anyway and i keep up my weight training as well
to maintain muscle mass so i recommend that my clients do whatever form of
cardio they enjoy to try to push it a little bit harder over time as they get
more fit most of my clients have been active for a period of time before they
come to me so they're not generally beginners but for anyone that i work
with that is a complete beginner i usually think that walking is a great
idea and that's what i recommend especially if someone's been very
sedentary for a long period of time just getting out and walking more often can
be really helpful i always try to get people to find the type of cardio that
they really enjoy and that they know they're going to be able to continue
with your heart doesn't care what activity you do all it cares about is
how fast it's pumping let me know in the comments what type of cardio you do and
what type of intensity you're working at please hit the like button if anything i
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