Can You Lose Weight Only Cardio – The new year will likely mean a new renewed attempt to lose weight and of course that usually means healthy eating and a lot of exercise. There are many kinds of exercise that can be done and of course all are helpful but can concentrating on cardio specifically be enough to lose the holiday pounds? Can You Lose Weight Only With Cardio In my opinion the answer to the questions “Can You Lose Weight Only With Cardio?” is yes. However that doesn’t mean that it is the best way to lose weight but lets look at how it could be done. We need to assume that under your normal everyday diet that you don’t put weight on. If your diet is somewhere around 2000-2500 calories a day for a woman and 2500-3000 calories a day for a man you may find that with normal activity levels you don’t lose or gain weight. Of course these figures vary person to person and I do believe what you eat has an impact on your fat levels regardless of calories. Can You Lose Weight Only Cardio Anyway, you are on a diet that you stay a stable weight with…. You want to lose a few pounds so decide to take up some form of cardio, it could be the elliptical, running or swimming. I’ll take running as the example as it’s my exercise of choice, I even blog about it on my Running Blog . Running, and walking for that matter, on average burns around 100 calories per mile for an average person. A lb of fat is thought to be around 3000 calories! So the math says you need to run / walk 30 miles to lose 1 lb of fat, yikes! 30 miles per week is 5 miles per day for 6 days with one rest day. Unless you are at least a little experienced it is unlikely you can do this right out of the gates, to start 2.5 miles of running / walking a day with a rest day is much more likely. That would result in about 1/2lb fat loss per week. Just in that example alone you can see that losing weight only with cardio is going to be a struggle. Say you drink two extra pints of beer one day, that’s over 500 calories, an entire days running 5 miles, gone to waste! Ideally you need to incorporate diet and strength training into the mix to lose weight at a more steady rate. How diet and strength training and yoga can help stabilize weight loss Diet is probably the fastest way to lose weight. Swapping out high calorie fatty foods for healthier choices can bring down calorific load and increase nutrients to the body. As an example, swapping heavy bulk like potatoes (especially if fried) for things like large servings of broccoli and cauliflower could be just one step to streamline your eating. Strength training will increase muscle density / bulk. You don’t need to become Arnie but a little bulk will increase your metabolism and the resting calories you burn and you will see increasing effectiveness of your cardio workouts as you gain general body fitness. Yoga is an essential and favorite exercise of mine too. It can be incredibly intense so burns calories but also just helps you feel so much better about yourself and life. Decreased depression from this helps you stick to goals and mindfulness, awareness of ones self and what is around you, helps you focus on all life goals, including other exercise. Can You Lose Weight Only With Cardio… So that’s my take, I hope you found the article helpful and I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject. Thanks for reading.
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