What comes to mind when you hear the word cardio? Do you picture yourself dripping sweat from your brow while racing on the treadmill or enjoying a quick walk on your lunch break? It’s a combination of the two. Cardiovascular exercise, often known as an aerobic workout, is defined as any activity that requires the use of oxygen.In this article, we’ll cover if you should just do cardio to lose weight?
It’s common to do cardio exercises like walking, running, swimming, biking, and going to gyms. They include a rower, an elliptical, a stair climber, an upright or recumbent cycle, and a treadmill. All of these machines work for your heart.
Moreover, cardio can help you lose weight by burning calories and speeding up your metabolism. However, if you also do some strength training at least 2 or 3 times a week, you could lose more weight more quickly and efficiently than if you did cardio alone. To lose weight, the amount of cardio you need depends on a lot of things. For instance, your weight, how much you eat, how active you are, and your age.
How important is Cardio for weight loss?
Further, you can cut down on total body fat and waist and hip circumferences by doing cardio work. These are important indicators of overall health. As a result of its biological effects, it makes your heart more healthy. Also, makes it able to deliver oxygen-rich blood flow to the muscles so that they can contract and expand.
How to lose weight by cardio
Let us first understand the mechanism of weight loss in the body. To lose weight, you must first develop a calorie deficit in your diet. The calorie count you intake must be less than the calories you burn to lose weight. The amount of weight you lose is determined by the quantity of exercise you are willing to put in throughout a single week.
Role of cardio
As long as you don’t eat more calories after you work out, you’ll be able to cut down on how many calories you need to cut from your diet as a whole.
You burn more calories when you raise your heart rate to the desired heart rate zone because your blood is pounding faster, you breathe harder, and you sweat more. All of these things make your body burn more calories at the same time, which means you burn more calories. To burn more calories, you have to work harder or longer or do it for a long time.
However, when you work out harder, you will burn more calories. In other words, when you run faster or jump higher, climb hills or try new things, your metabolic rate can go up or down. Even small changes in intensity can have a big effect on your metabolic rate.
Will cardio make you lose weight?
Now, in general, the more cardio you perform, the more calories you burn. However, this isn’t always true. Finally, this is good because it will help you burn more calories. As a result, you can lose weight in the long run. However, there are a lot of other things that play a big role in the process. It becomes important to mix several other types of workouts due to several reasons enumerated below:
- Overuse
Performing cardiovascular exercises on a daily basis can result in damage. If you simply engage in one type of exercise on a daily basis, you endanger your body with injuries due to overuse. Cardiovascular exercise is a significant contributor to this problem. Since motions such as sprinting and jumping place a great deal of strain on your joints. Injuring yourself and having to miss out on your fitness program will undoubtedly put a crimp in your weight-loss plans.
- Metabolism rate
Muscle strength might not burn as many calories in the short term, but building muscle makes you burn more calories even when you’re not exercising. It simply boosts your metabolism rate. People who want to lose weight should also focus on strength training as it is also a powerful and indispensable part of the process. Hence, the use of only cardio training might not be the most beneficial technique, according to the experts.
- Mixing up of workout
It will be more difficult for your body to do a workout plan that includes a wide range of activities, which will keep you motivated and on track. On the other hand, if you have a more predictable schedule, you might lose your motivation and give up. You can choose online fitness training that fits your schedule. This way you don’t have to give up on your transformation journey.
Should you just do cardio to lose weight? Summary
Cardiovascular exercise and weight training can both help you get healthy and fit. The calories burned during a cardio workout are greater than those burned during a weight-training workout. Weight lifting, as opposed to exercise, may cause your metabolism to remain raised for a longer period of time, and weight training is more effective for muscle growth. If you exercise for more than 150 minutes on average weekly, cardio is more beneficial than strength training at reducing body fat. When it comes to gaining muscle, weight training outperforms cardio. Overall, when it comes to optimizing your body composition, a combination of aerobic and weight training may be the most effective.
As a result, the optimal exercise regimen for changing body shape and health should incorporate both cardio and weight training. It is preferable to do both.