![]() How Much Cardio Should I Do To Lose Weight? How Much Is Too Much?(Sometimes a reader will email me a question that needs a full article to answer properly, and sometimes it’s an answer I think others will benefit from hearing. This is one of those times.)QUESTION: I’m trying to lose weight, and I just wanted to know how much cardio you think I should do? ![]() How many times per week? How many minutes each time? I’ve also been reading a lot of your articles and I’ve seen you mention that doing too much cardio can lead to muscle loss, so I was also wondering what you’d consider “too much” to be? ANSWER: If you’re a regular reader of mine, then you probably know my general opinion of cardio. For that sort of thing, I actually think cardio is highly overrated and much less useful than most people think/hope it is. I also don’t find typical forms of it (like jogging on a treadmill) to be all that fun or enjoyable. Plus, like the person asking this question mentioned, there is legit potential for cardio to negatively effect muscle maintenance. Wondering how long it will take to lose the weight you seek? This thorough guide will help you establish a realistic timeframe for your weight loss goals. Sodium and Weight. Sodium does not cause permanent weight gain, but eating too much can cause water retention. An extra 400 milligrams of sodium in your body results. If you want to lose weight, cardio can be a useful tool to use along with your diet. The question is, how much should you do, and how much is too much? How to lose weight in 10 days? Is that even possible? Our expert Nithila gives you 25 simple tips that will make it possible! Follow them if you are in a haste to. Write down what you eat for one week and you will lose weight. Studies found that people who keep food diaries wind up eating about 15 percent less food than those. Is your weight healthy? Use the calculator below to find out. If your actual body weight falls within 10% (above or below) the weight calculated, you are within a. More stuff you can eat & drink to lose weight 249 weight loss foods; 7 Weight Loss Drinks other than water; 28 Foods that will flush out water weight. So to recap, I think cardio is overrated, boring and doing too much has the potential to be problematic. Wow, sign me up! Having said that, it CAN still be a useful fat loss tool. So if you’ve determined that you need/want to do some for that purpose, that’s totally fine and exactly what you should do. The question is, how much? ![]() ![]() How Much Cardio Should You Do? There’s two answers to this. I love my breakfasts. It’s crazy to think that I could lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks while eating this every morning. It’s great though because in the evening when I. Exercise 45-60 minutes a day to lose weight. The recommended amount of aerobic exercise to lose weight and keep it off is: 45-60 minutes of exercise a day. ![]() Let’s start with the broader, simpler one. Not quite rocket science, I know. But I obviously can’t you give an exact amount here because it will vary significantly from person to person based on their specific needs and the needs of the sport they’re training for. Not to mention, as someone who has little to no interest whatsoever in endurance sports, I probably wouldn’t be the best person to ask in the first place. ![]() ![]() I point this out in a blatant attempt to hopefully start getting less emails from sprinters and marathon runners in the future. Someone Trying To Lose Weight/Get Leaner. Now what about the case of someone who wants to lose weight while ensuring that “weight” is only body fat and not lean muscle. Which, by the way, should be the goal of everyone trying to lose fat (although the obese won’t need to worry until they’re leaner). Well, the first thing you need to keep in mind is that unlike an athlete training for a sport where this sort of activity is a requirement, cardio is completely optional for losing fat. Seriously. The one and only requirement for fat loss is a caloric deficit, and that can happen through diet alone with absolutely no cardio being done whatsoever. For me personally, that’s my preferred way of doing it. ![]() ![]() If anything, I view cardio (and other forms of “fat burning” exercise like metabolic training) more as a last resort option to go to when I’m trying to get extra lean and my progress has stalled, but I’ve reached a point where I’d rather start increasing calorie output instead of reducing calorie intake. Which is honestly rare as hell. And generally speaking, that’s what I’d recommend to most people. Healthy food 10 Insanely Hot (Healthy) Recipes to Help You Lose Weight Research shows spicy foods can boost your metabolism and make you feel full—here are 10. It’s typically more efficient and sustainable to just eat a few hundred fewer calories per day than it is to burn those same few hundred calories every day through additional activity. Or just skip it, period. But hey, that’s just me, and I realize not everyone is like me. It turns out some people prefer to use cardio to set/help set their deficit rather than just doing it through their diet alone. And that’s perfectly fine. More about that here: Should I Do Cardio On My Rest Days? To figure out your maintenance level and create your deficit, read the diet guide.)To make this happen, our example person can: Consume 2. Consume 2. 50. 0 calories per day and do an amount of cardio that allows them to burn 5. Consume 2. 25. 0 calories and do an amount of cardio that burns 2. These 3 scenarios (and other similar ones that use numbers different than the example . As long as the same deficit ends up being there in the end, that’s really all that matters. Your goal is to figure out which scenario is most efficient, convenient, preferable and sustainable for you. Simple as that. If that happens to be the first scenario (my personal preference), that’s fine. How much cardio should you do? Zero. If it happens to be the second or third scenario, that’s fine too. How much cardio should you do then? That depends on your specific needs. As much as you want me to just say “do X minutes of cardio Y days per week,” I hope you see that it’s a bit more complicated than that and the exact amounts for X and Y will vary based on exactly how much cardio you require — in conjunction with your diet — for your deficit to exist. So one person might need to do 6. Maybe 5 times per week. Maybe 3. 25 calories worth 4 times per week. Maybe dozens of other amounts dozens of other frequencies. Basically, whatever amount you need to be doing to burn the calories you need to burn to create your deficit and cause fat loss. Search for something like “calories burned” and get a few million answers. And don’t worry, as long as the amount of cardio being done isn’t too much, you’ll be just fine. What? What’s that you’re yelling at your screen? Oh, I hear ya? By negatively affecting weight training performance, recovery and your ability to maintain muscle and strength in a deficit. The higher the frequency (2- 4 days per week or 7 days per week?), duration (2. HIIT?), the higher that potential risk is. To eliminate this risk, you just need to put together a combination of these 3 factors that doesn’t add up to being “too much.” And so the question is. Because what constitutes “too much cardio” will vary from person to person based on everything from individual work capacity and recovery capabilities to sleep, stress and age. Plus, how your weight training program is designed. For example, are you training with some kind of idiotic high volume bodybuilding routine, or something more ideal for deficit conditions? You know, like my Fat Loss + Muscle Maintenance program from The Best Workout Routines. It all plays a role. So, what might be too much cardio for one person could be perfectly fine for another. For this reason, I still can’t provide the exact X and Y figures you’re looking for. What I can do however is help you know when it’s happening. I want you to pay close attention to everything. Then, I want you to answer the following sets of questions: Is weight training performance going well? Are you maintaining (or possibly improving) your strength levels? Are those workouts feeling okay overall? If so, that’s a very good sign that everything is probably fine. Is weight training performance starting to drop off quite a bit? Are your strength levels beginning to decrease? Are you feeling borderline dead during those workouts? If so, that’s a very good sign that everything is not fine. Similarly, you should also pay attention to how you’re feeling outside of the gym and answer another set of questions: Are you feeling good? Does everything seem fairly normal and typical for what comes with being in a deficit for the purpose of losing fat? If so, awesome? Are you having trouble sleeping or maybe getting sick more often than normal? Does your body and/or mind feel as though you just might be doing a bit too much training? If so, that’s a damn good sign that you probably are. Basically, if everything seems to be going well and you feel pretty good, I’d say keep on doing what you’re doing. On the other hand, if you’re starting to feel like crap and weight training performance isn’t going well (or at least as well as one should realistically expect in a deficit), I’d take that as a sign that it’s time to adjust and reduce something somewhere. And assuming you’re already doing everything else right (e. This doesn’t mean doing none whatsoever. It could just mean cutting back on the total number of days you’re doing it, or the duration you’re doing it for each time, or how intense your chosen form of it is. Just keep in mind however that reducing any aspect of cardio means you’re reducing calories burned, so your diet will need to make up the difference in order for your deficit to continue to be present. Which, in my opinion, is the ideal way for most people to be approaching fat loss anyway. How Much Cardio to Lose Weight? There is so much confusion out there about how much cardio you should do to lose weight. Some say you need to be doing it every single day. Some say twice a day, and some even say you don’t have to do it at all. So then, who’s right? Let’s break it down and see if we can clarify the question. How Much is REQUIRED to Lose Weight? Short answer – absolutely none. Am I recommending that you do zero cardio to lose weight? Absolutely not. However, from a strictly physiological standpoint, cardiovascular training is not required at all to lose weight. Don’t think so? Try not eating anything for a week while you are completely sedentary. Obviously, in time, you will wilt to nothing. As health and fitness individuals we aren’t just trying to lose weight. We are trying to spare muscle tissue (or build some) while we drop our body fat. Sometimes that means we lose weight, but sometimes that means our weight stays the same while our body composition changes. The only way to know what’s really going on is to measure with body fat calipers. Either way, the question shouldn’t be how much cardio to lose weight, but instead – how much cardio to lose fat? How Much Cardio to Lose Fat? Strictly speaking, as with all things fitness related, it’s going to depend. However, there are a few guidelines I like to follow that I think are good catch- alls for most people. If you have a sedentary job, it’s a good idea to do cardio. If your strength training workouts aren’t high intensity, it’s a good idea to do cardio. If reaching your desired goal means you have to eat below your BMR, it’s a good idea to do cardio. In other words, if all you do is work out for 3. Remember, part of living a health and fitness lifestyle means being active. Get up and move around. Try to get in around 1. Intense Strength Training. The same goes for if your strength training workouts aren’t that intense. Most people forget that strength training and cardio don’t have to be two separate, mutually exclusive activities. Cardio is short for cardiovascular training. If you are pushing yourself hard during your workouts, additional cardio like running or biking is not always necessary. Doing squats with sets of 1. Your body is going to get the cardiovascular benefits. Don’t Eat Below Your BMRFinally, if hitting your weight loss goal of say 2 pounds/week means that you would need to eat below your BMR, you should instead eat more food and do additional cardio work (eat more, move more). Let’s take a look at my go- to equation (The Katch- Mc. Ardle Formula) for determining an accurate BMR: BMR = 3. LBM)LBM is your lean body mass in kg. I like this equation because most others don’t take into account body composition. As muscle is more metabolically active than fat, I believe this formula is much more accurate. So, let’s break down an example for someone who is 1. Someone at those stats has 3. Subtract those 3. Next, take that number and convert it to kg. So 1. 20lbs / 2. 2 = 5. Now we just plug those numbers into the Katch- Mc. Ardle formula above: BMR = 3. If reaching your weight loss goal means you have to eat less than 1. BMR and create your deficit with additional cardio. Eating below your BMR is a sure way to lose muscle and stall your weight loss. Determining Your Cardio Requirements. Now that you know if you should be doing cardio or not, let’s briefly cover how much cardio you should do to lose weight. I recommend that you do the least amount that is necessary to reach both your performance goals AND your body composition goals. If you have goals to improve your cardiovascular fitness, or to have a faster 5k time, your training is going to need to reflect that. If you’re just trying to maintain your cardiovascular fitness while dropping body fat, you won’t need as much. Whatever your goals, be efficient with it. The reasons are several- fold: In a hypo- caloric environment it is much easier to over- train. The few calories and nutrients you’re ingesting are needed to support muscle tissue growth and repair. Devoting unneeded energy to cardio works against those goals. It is much easier to cut 1. BMR) than it is to add in 1. Whether you need an additional 1. Whatever amount you choose to do, just make sure cardio is working for you and not against you.
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