Do You Need Cardio to Lose Fat?

Do You Need Cardio to Lose Fat?

Walk into just about any commercial gym, and you’ll find a host of gym-goers sweating their tails off on treadmills, ellipticals and stair climbers in an attempt to re-shape their bodies.

Is what they’re doing effective?

Who knows?

But here’s a better question – do you NEED to do cardio to lose body fat?

As is almost always the answer in the fitness industry, it depends.

In that case, you don’t necessarily need cardio, but it can help.

You don’t necessarily need cardio to lose body fat, but in some cases, it can help.

So how do you lose weight?

To lose weight, you need to create an energy deficit, which will be accomplished primarily from proper resistance training and eating in a calorie deficit.

Lifting weights is highly important for retaining muscle mass as you diet because you’re probably interested in losing mostly fat and not muscle.

Make as much progress as you can from strength training and eating in a calorie deficit. Eventually, though, your progress may stall.

When your progress stalls, you have a couple of options. You can either cut calories or add exercise, usually in the form of cardio.

Now, you’ll reach a point when cutting calories is no longer desirable, so you would be wise at this time to add a bit of additional exercise. However, there’s a limit.

If you add in too much cardio, it can interfere with your gains in strength and muscle growth.

What if you just want to “tone?”

Even if your goal is to “tone,” you still need to limit cardio so you can retain muscle mass. Ultimately, “toning” means stripping away body fat so your muscles show. But if you do too much cardio, you’ll lose muscle mass, and the definition or tone you crave will be even more difficult to achieve.

Now, you can technically get away with no cardio, but after a while of cutting calories, it may be a good idea to create a further energy deficit by adding in some cardio.

Always start with the minimum effective dose. Add the least amount of cardio possible to still see adequate changes. Then, once your progress, stalls, add a little more.

2 Types of Cardio

1. LISS (Low-Intensity Steady State)

With LISS, you move at a slow, steady pace for an extended period of time. Light and easy cardio isn’t a very big stress on the body, so it likely won’t interfere with your muscle and strength improvements. However, the calorie burn is lower with this method, so you would need to do a lot of LISS to notice significant improvements in fat loss.

2. HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training)

With HIIT, you perform short bursts of high-intensity activity with rest periods in between. This type of exercise is performed at a high intensity, so you’ll burn more calories because of EPOC (Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption). Also known as the “afterburn” effect, your body will continue to burn calories after the workout is over as it attempts to restore the body to a homeostatic (rest-and-digest) state.

However, you need to be careful with the modality used for HIIT because high impact can cause muscle damage and soreness. You also need to ensure you don’t over-do the number of HIIT sessions you perform per week because they can impact recovery.

Begin with an interval like 30 seconds ON, 60 seconds OFF or 15 seconds ON, 30 seconds OFF.

As a starting point, add one or two of each type of cardio first. Add in 5-8 bouts of HIIT per session and 20-30 minutes of LISS. As your progress stalls, you can either further reduce the calorie deficit by decreasing calories or increasing cardio. However, you don’t want more than a few sessions per week so the cardio doesn’t interfere with your muscle and strength gains.

If you add too much right away, your body will adapt to the higher demands, and you’ll then need to add in ​even more​ cardio to continue to make progress. You’ll need to do an insane amount of cardio, and you’ll likely burn out, get injured or stop making progress because you’re over-stressing your body.

If your goal is to improve your strength or body composition, your cardio should use an implement that is low-impact to reduce the likelihood of injury and soreness. You don’t want cardio to hinder your strength training performance.

Recommended forms of cardio

Elliptical

Rowing machine

Biking

Swimming

Walking

Light resistance-training circuits

Low-impact implements (i.e. tire flips, battle ropes, punching bag and sledgehammer slams)

Not recommended for cardio

Running outside

Running on a treadmill

***note: if you enjoy running and it doesn’t cause injury, keep running, but running with improper form or running too much can wreak havoc on your joints

Let’s sum it up

So you don’t necessarily need cardio to lose body fat, but it can help at certain points during your active fat loss phase.

When you add cardio, add it gradually. Don’t do too much too soon.

And choose a method of cardio that won’t beat up your joints!