Cardio versus weight training ? Which one is best to burn fat ?

At first sight, one might say that if you want to lose fat,
all you have to do is cardio or more cardio because
it is made to burn off calories.

And if you want to build muscle, one might say that you have to do weight training.

But is it as simple than that ?

1- Cardio versus weight training: does cardio has an advantage ?

It is true that is you look just at calorie burning, cardio as a little advantage.

You burn around 12 calories doing a minute of cardio vs 10 calories if you lift weights.

But always keep in mind that time is precious, and it can be boring for some to do cardio
for a long time.

If you have the time, you can burn up to 800 calories for an hour of cardio (which is great).

And if you don’t have a lot of time, you can do HIIT as a form of cardio.

Timing cardio to optimize fat burning is also important.

(Find here when it is the best time to do cardio.)

2- Cardio versus weight training: what does weight lifting offer ?

The good thing about weight lifting is that it gives you
a huge metabolic spike because after  just an hour of your workout,
your body will burn off more calories
just to help your muscles to recover.

You will burn an additional 25% of the calories you burned during weight training.

So if you burned 100 calories during weight training, you will burn
later without doing anything 25 calories more,
for a total of 125 calories.

And let’s remember something important.

The more muscle mass you have, the more calories you burn during the day,
without doing anything and without changing your diet

3- A good diet is the real key to fat loss

Both have a lot of advantages for fat loss, we can’t deny that.

However, even if you combine both cardio and weight training,
the real key is having (and keeping!) a good diet.

Every day I see plenty of people who train a lot, doing cardio
and/or weight training BUT still holds on a lot of fat.

Why ?

Because they have a very poor diet.

You can’t lose a lot of weight if you go crazy about food.

You have to know what to eat exactly to burn fat.

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