If you want to lose fat, DONT just do cardio!!!!!!!!
Why? Well here's why:
First off, let me explain 3 energy systems in your body real quick.
You got the Anaerobic a-lactic system. This system is active for about 20seconds total, and uses ATP and CP as fuel. (these are within the muscles already).
Then you got the anaerobic lactic system. This system is active from 20seconds to 2minutes. It uses some glucose as fuel but not much.
Then there's the aerobic system. This system takes over after 2minutes and goes on till you drop dead (or just stop exercising
). This system uses 2 fuels, kind of like a hybrid car. The first fuel is glucose, which is easy to burn. Your body has a stock of glucose for about 45-60 minutes (depends on your condition). Once that runs out, it'll go over to burning fat. Fat is harder to burn, so your body chooses glucose over fat in the first phase.
Alright, now you know that it's pretty simple to conclude why cardio sucks for burning fat.
Yes, you're right. You'll only start to burn fat after 45-60minutes of workout! So the first 45-60minutes are wasted!
Ok, so now you're thinking: working out for less then 45-60minutes is just useless. Well, actually it isn't. Just don't do cardio. Go do weight lifting!
Weight lifting increases your muscles, and the bigger your muscles the more fuel they need. The bigger the car, the more fuel it needs per km / mile). Sure, you won't be burning any fat when you're doing the workout. As most workouts are about an hour long and you still use glucose. BUT, because you're muscles will grow you will be using more fuel everytime of the day. Even when sleeping.
and a side effect: bigger muscles will tone your body. Though you don't have to become a body builder. Not at all. Just a musculair guy like Brad Pitt or something.
The basics of losing fat is really easy. Just burn more calories then you eat. When you go and do a workout, you will burn more calories. Here comes the hard part: When you do workouts, you will be more hungry as your bordy needs to compensate those lost calories. So most of the time you will start to eat more. That's not a big deal, just keep the calories LOWER then what you're burning. If your body gets less calories then it needs, it'll go for the fat (stored fuel). And thus you're losing fat.
Just one more thing I wanted to state, specially when you're doing weight lifting.
What's heavier? A pound of iron, or a pound of feathers?
Indeed, they both are a pound. BUT which one has a bigger size?
Indeed, the feathers. Now the same goes for fat and muscles. In the metaphore stated above the iron are the muscles and the feathers are the fat.
So when you're doing weight lifting, you will lose fat but create bigger muscles. So you're weight will stay the same (or even go up) while youre body gets thinner and get a better, healthier and musculair shape. Isn't that what we want?
Look at waist inches, cloth sizes and bodyfat% instead of pounds/kilo's!!
To increase your calorie burning rate, you can do some cardio at the end of the weight lifting. As you have run out of glucose with the weights, you now start using fat while doing cardio. So that way you'll lose the fat even faster.
A workout I usually give to people:
10min cardio as warming-up
legs - 1 exercise
shoulders - 1 exercise
back - 1 exercise
pectorals - 1 exercise
abdominals - 1 exercise
15min cardio cooling down.
You could add like 30minutes of cardio before the cooling down, but I don't think it's needed.
Depending on your goal, you need to adjust the sets and reps for each exercise. Ask your local gym about that.
Well, a big wall of text but I hope it'll help you guys.
Cheers,
NAB
CHAT
