Fat Loss 101: Cardio vs. Resistance Training for Maximum Weight Loss
I’ve just got a quick little rundown of the differences between cardiovascular exercise and strength training. Now it’s most important to look at how these two different forms of exercise affect fat loss and I’ll show you what the research has shown. The difference here between cardio and strength training.
#1 Cardio raises the stress hormone called cortisol. If you’ve read about this recently lately, the cortisol when it elevates in the body, it stops you from losing fat. On the opposite end –strength training lowers cortisol. Why? Because it raises all those good hormones.
#2 Secondly, is cardio actually lowers your anti-aging hormones such as growth hormone, progesterone, and testosterone, and even DHDA(DHEA?). If you’re familiar with those, those are your anti-aging hormones. Cardiovascular work lowers those because it raises cortisol. On the opposite end, strength training, lowers cortisol and raises anti-aging hormones. So strength training causes a boost in growth hormone, testosterone, and can even improve DHDA(DHEA?) and in females can raise progesterone. Why? Because it lowers cortisol because the good hormones are going up.
#3 Next. You only burn body fat while you’re doing cardiovascular exercise. Which is cool but the problem is once you get good at it you start to burn less calories while you’re doing that activity. The good thing about strength training is you burn calories while you do nothing. Why? Because strength training is stressful on the body and it takes a number of days to recover from the strength training effort. Therefore, you burn fat at rest. I don’t know about you but I’d rather burn fat doing nothing than having to spend time, hours slaving away on the cardiovascular devices.
#4 Lastly, when you do cardiovascular work you lose muscle tone. Anyone who wants to argue with me about this can look at the difference between a sprinter and a marathon runner. Marathon runners’ average body fat is around 10% and they look flabby. They don’t look very lean. On the opposite end you’ve got a sprinter whose extremely lean and very muscular. That’s the difference. If you do lots of cardio you lose tone. However, if you do strength training you build muscle tone and you actually build shape to your muscles. So I don’t know about you but I’d rather not look skinny and fat. I’d rather look toned and have a lot of lean mass. That also increases the burning fat at rest.