Walk into any commercial gym in the world and you will find endless rows of treadmills, stair climbers, bikes and other cardio
machines. Commercial gyms and fitness centres offer aerobic classes with exotic names like “fatburner” or spinning classes where dozens of people peddle their hearts out on bikes.
Logically, all of these things are great for anyone who wants to lose weight. Cardio burns calories and aids fat loss, right?
All these classes and gyms are packed with people desperately huffing and puffing away in an effort to shed a few pounds. They can't all be doing the wrong thing, surely?
If only all these people would just open their eyes. They don’t even have to look far! They just need to glance to their side at their fellow sufferers or straight in front them
- at the instructors of these classes themselves. Most of them are straight up overweight or skinny fat. They step, spin and dance away for sometimes hours a day, yet there’s no definition whatsoever to be found on their bodies. They never seem to actually get any more ripped, toned, or defined!
Why is it that people think they will get results, when the instructors themselves don’t? They keep slaving away hours after hours hoping that some magic will happen, and the logic will start to work.
I once read a pretty good definition of insanity. I don't need to tell you that Einstein was a smart guy.
Why don’t people question their “logic” when it isn't producing results? If cardio is such a great way to lose weight, why does it fail so many people?
It amazes me that most people just copy what everyone else is doing, even when it obviously isn't working. Even personal trainers. What you hear about cardio seems to add up on paper. In practice, cardio doesn't produce results and sometimes even backfires, leaving people even more overweight. You have to wonder, if cardio isn't working now for these people, when is it going to startworking? The simple answer is: never. More of the same won’t help. Often, it will make the problem even worse.
This e-book is about how bad aerobics or cardiovascular training is for fat loss, so that’s what I’m going to use as an example to illustrate my point.Most people know the following facts about cardio.
• Cardio burns calories during the actual session.
• Cardio burns calories after the session.
• Cardio raises the body’s metabolic rate.
• Cardio puts the body into a calorie deficit.
• And all in all, it supposedly burns body fat.
The underlying logic is appealing – you are told that aerobics and cardio burn calories, and you have to burn calories to loose fat. And this is absolutely correct. You need a calorie deficit to lose body fat. The problem is that the body is a lot smarter than people give it credit for.
The body only thinks in terms of survival: your body doesn't give a damn about how you want it to look! The body will burn as few calories as possible to make this happen. The more calories preserved, the better during times of famine. Remember, our current standard of living is a recent development which evolution hasn't caught up with. 10,000 years ago there were no supermarkets on every corner!
The muscles in our bodies are the powerhouses that primarily dictate our metabolism.Our body is like a car.
Muscle tissue is the most metabolically expensive tissue we have in the body, so it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if we build muscle through strength training we put a bigger engine in the body which will in turn require more fuel (calories) – even at rest.
A bigger engine in a car burns more fuel. Similarly, the more muscle you have, the more calories your body requires to function.That’s the beauty of building muscle – it increases our metabolism which allows us to eat more without gaining body fat! It also allows us to burn body fat more easily if we have a negative calorie balance.
Now back to the logic that if you perform cardio you burn calories. No arguments there. The BIG problem is that a lot more is going on. Cardio doesn't work in our favour when fat loss is the objective.
Let's find out more...