Is Endurance Cardio Training For Weight Loss Effective?

 We all know the rules when it comes to health and fitness, right? No pain, no gain is the reason so many people are spending so much time sweating on treadmills pursuing a lean, toned body. But is endurance cardio training for weight loss effective?

Things to consider

The first consideration is the law of specificity when it comes to exercise. If you want to get better swimming, you swim, if you would like to get better at sprinting, you sprint, and if you would like to build your endurance you do endurance cardio.

Does that make endurance cardio for weight loss effective? No, endurance cardio will......you guessed it; increase your endurance. Sure, it burns calories, but so does any form of exercise.

The fact is any mode of exercise can be effective for your weight loss goals, but first you must get into a calorie deficit, and that is the key to effective weight loss.

The way you eat is way more important than endurance cardio for weight loss

If your primary goal is weight loss, you need to eat in line with that goal. Energy deficit rules, and if you take in fewer calories than you use, you will lose weight. 

You can create this deficit by eating less, or exercising more, or a combination of both. However, when choosing a form of exercise to compliment your weight loss nutrition plan here are a few things to keep in mind.

1) Cardio is not time efficient

2) Our bodies are designed to make the most of the energy we take in, so it takes a relatively long time to burn off the energy in the food we eat with exercise. That time can be undone instantly, and it may well be for one compelling reason…

2) Cardio will probably make you hungry

3) All that running is great for building up an appetite, but what this means is that there is an excellent chance that the hour you spend on endurance cardio will be undone in a minute as your craving for food to replace the energy you have just spent.

3) Too much cardio isn't much fun

4) Some of us love it, but it definitely is not for everyone. If it's not for you, you already know. The good news is that it is not necessary for your weight loss goals

4) Endurance cardio uses time and energy you could be putting to use building a lean, toned body

5) Seen a marathon runner lately? Admirable as their efforts are, most of us, prefer the lean toned look of a Hollywood star, or a sprinter. The best way to get this look is with the proper use of resistance training.

There are a couple of ways to use cardiovascular exercise to burn fat. One kind will give you amazing results without wasting your time, and the other puts you on a long, hard road which often yields no benefits whatsoever.

The way that you think of exercising to lose weight is about to change. Traditional cardio exercise requires you to spend a lot of time sweating away, and how typically have you been happy with the results of this exercise?

 Typically, people spend weeks working hard and have little or no weight loss,, so they get discouraged and give up. The weight just won't come off.

This method of exercise is not effective and takes up a lot of time. Doing this type of exercise will make you hungry,, so you actually gain weight! People write this off as muscle being heavier than fat.

This is not what is happening! Your body craves calories after spending lots of time working out. Furthermore, high-impact exercise like running is detrimental to your joint and heart health.

Don't worry, there is a better way, and it is known as “HIIT”. This is High Intensity Interval Training, and it was invented in 1996.

A study by Izumi Tabata revealed that this system causes a high rate of V02max increase. What does that mean? V02max is a measurement of cardiovascular fitness. The study found that HIIT was unparalleled in effectiveness for cardiovascular health and fitness.

The HIIT system has started catching on recently. People cannot believe the wonderful results they get in a short time. You will love this innovative and effective system for so many reasons.

It will save you so much time, taking only 4-19 minutes from start to finish. You will burn more fat in much less time! Also, you will find your appetite decreasing as a result of this exercise. Of course, this will help you lose weight too. 

Not only do you burn maximum calories during your workout, but your body will keep burning calories long after you have stopped. HGH is an important hormone that this system helps increase in the body.

No matter the number of pounds you may have, they can be shed off through, cardiovascular exercise. Have a change of mind towards losing your weight, try cardio activities. Though, all forms of exercises require time and cause you to sweat. Some of these exercises are highlighted below.

1. Cycling: this is a common way of exercising to shed off pounds. Cycling requires you pedaling all the way, thereby expending your calories in the release of energy to do so. Cycling can be done for about 30 minutes with medium speed, though pedaling at a fast pace is very efficient.

2. Running: of course, we can't exclude running from an exercise plan, in fact, so many people do it without the consciousness of performing it for losing calories. Running is a type of exercise that uses the whole body simultaneously. It is a cheap form of exercise and can be done anywhere, so far you are ready to do it.

3. Taking a Walk: this is the least calorie burning exercise. Thus, going through this regime takes you a longer time to burn your calories. You can even decide to walk at a faster pace, this will help burn more calories in time. Experts have proven that to lose pounds by walking, you have to spend about an hour daily.

4. Swimming: swimming is done for fun by most youths, but, it is also a way of losing some calories in your body. Statistics revealed that about 300-400 calories can be lost when swimming severely for about 30 minutes and more. 

Thus, swimming can only help in losing pounds when it is done rigorously and not for catching fun. After serious swimming, the next thing that follows is panting; this is a good indication of burnt calories.

5. Aerobics: this is a common form of cardiovascular exercise for females. Its primary objective is burning of fats from particular areas of the body, such as hips and legs. The interesting thing is that, 350-400 calories can be burnt within a period of 40 minutes.

My calorie burning cardio experiment.

There is a better approach, and I want to show that approach to you. In this article, I will use a few of my workouts and the actual calories burned, and fat calories burned to help demonstrate how to get the most from your workout.

Let me start by explaining what I did. I took three different kids of workouts and compared the results. The comparison was made between high intensity interval training (HIIT), long slow distance training (LSD), and medium distance interval training. 

I chose these three methods because the first two, HIIT and LSD, have been at the center of a debate over the last few years, and there is a great deal of controversy as to which is better for weight loss.

I also added middle distance interval training so that we could see how this method to compared to the others. 

Furthermore, I recorded each session and wrote down the duration of the workout, my heart rate, how many calories I burned, and the total fat calories burned. Furthermore, I used my Polar FT60 heart rate monitor for this comparison test.

This experiment is not exact, but it doesn't need to be either. It just needs to be consistent, so we can make an intelligent comparison between the three workouts. The point is, don't worry about the exact numbers used here. 

Your caloric burn is different from mine, your heart rate is different from mine, and your fitness is different the mine. The conclusions that we draw are more important than the actual numbers used.

Fist, so we are all on the same page, let's take a look at what I mean when I say LSD, HIIT, and MDI.

Is HIIT The Best?

High Intensity Interval Training is akin to sprint training. Essentially, you run very “hard” and then you rest and repeat the effort. The important thing to remember when doing HIIT is that “hard” means at or close to your maximum effort. 

That's why I say it's like sprint training, you have to really bust your behind and work at your greatest potential. On a level of 1-10 in terms of effort, HIIT is an 8-10, when done correctly.

One commonly used method of HIIT training is to work hard for 1 minute and then recover for 1 minute. For fat burning purposes, it is best to slow to a jog during your recovery period rather than stopping entirely. You will burn more calories this way. This work and recovery cycle gets repeated for the duration of the workout.

You can do HIIT training on a variety of exercise equipment, if you want to avoid running. I like bikes and elliptical machine for this kind of workout. It's not relevant what piece of equipment you chose, it's only important that you reach a level of effort of 8-10.

A Benefit of HIIT Training

One thing that many people don't realize is that an intense workout causes the body to burn calories after the workout, which is often referred to as the after burn effect. Exercise is a process of breaking down the body and building it back up, but stronger. 

When you do intense exercise, the body breakdown effect is much greater and there is a greater need for repair. The energy that goes into this repairing process burns additional calories, so hard exercise can have a fat blasting effect for hours after your workout.

Both HIIT Training and middle distance interval training are intense enough to give a good after burning effect.

The Bad About HIIT

Because of the intense nature of HIIT, your body will need time to recover afterwards. It is impractical to do HIIT every day, and it's difficult, even for very fit people, to do HIIT for a long duration.

 So, to burn more calories, you cannot simply do more HIIT without overtraining. Because of this, there are calories burning limits to HIIT.

Some very misinformed people will try to convince you that doing more HIIT is the answer to weight loss stalls, but they are sorely mistaken. Their recommendation will lead to overtraining, and overtraining is counterproductive to fat loss.

How Did HIIT Score?

My HIIT workout followed this pattern: 1 minute of a hard run followed by 1 minute of an easy recovery jog. I did this for a total of 23 minutes.

Time: 23 minutes, no measured warm up

Heart rate average: 158

Heart rate max: 168

Calories burned: 315

Fat calories: 31

LSD for Fat Loss

Now, just to be clear, when I talk about LSD for fat loss, it has nothing to do with illegal drugs. So, I am not suggesting you find the local drug dealer and start doing drugs to lose weight. Rather, I am referring to long slow distance training (LSD).

LSD training is the most common approach to cardio training in most commercial gyms. It's often called steady state training because you exercise at the same pace for your entire workout.

LSD training is not very intense. The goal of LSD training is to exercise for long periods of time, and to achieve this we need to avoid burning out, so training is slower and easier. It is best to do LSD training at an intensity level somewhere around the 4-7 range.

The Good About LSD

The best things about LSD are that most people can do some form of slow training. They can jog, walk, or even ride a bike for extended periods of time, once they have built up a bit of strength and endurance.

Furthermore, LSD is not terribly intense, so it is much easier to recover from. In fact, many athletes use LSD training as a recovery workout after previous intense workouts.

The Bad About LSD

With the good comes the bad. Because LSD is not a high intensity exercise, there is less post workout repair needed. So, we will burn fewer calories post-training in the recovery process. The main benefit to LSD is the calories burned while doing the exercise because relatively few are burned afterwards as a result of the workout.

How did LSD stack up?

Since this was an LSD workout, there was relatively small variation in pace and heart rate throughout the entire workout.

Time: 46 minutes, no measured warm up

Heart rate average: 122

Heart rate max: 131

Calories burned: 396

Fat calories: 99

Is MDI the best fat burning cardio exercise?

Middle distance intervals are not very popular with the fitness crowd. You are more likely to see track athletes and middle distance runners do these types of interval workouts. 

They are similar to HIIT in that there are work periods and rest periods, but different in that the work periods and rest periods are much longer. For example, a good program for soccer is 5 minutes of work with a 2-minute recovery jog.

When doing MDI, the important thing to remember is to attempt to maximize the effort during the work period. I do this by measuring the heart rate, but it can be done be estimating your work effort, like we talked about with HIIT. An effort of 7-9 is the right range for MDI.

Benefits of MDI

You can burn many calories with an MDI workout. Due to the pace, you wind up with a relatively short workout, but covers a pretty good distance.

Furthermore, like HIIT, there is an after burn effect from doing MDI. This means you will continue to burn calories during the post-workout “healing process”.

Downside to MDI

The downside to MDI is that it's hard. Not many people like to push themselves that hard for that long.

How did middle distance intervals stack up?

I wanted to make sure the duration of the workout was the same as the HIIT test, so this workout was done for exactly 23 minutes. 

That was a bit of an uneven number, so I did 4 sets of 4 minute intervals with a recovery jog of 1 minute between each set. I ended the session with a 3-minute interval so that I finished exactly at the 23-minute mark.

Time: 23 minutes, no measured warm up

Heart rate average: 160

Heart rate max: 167

Calories burned: 321

Fat calories: 32

So, what does this mean, and how do we know which one is best for burning fat?

First, let me point out that each workout burned many calories. However, the LSD workout was twice as long as the HIIT and MDI workouts, and that the results were not twice as good. In short, LSD is not an efficient workout.

There wasn't a lot of difference between HIIT and MDI. For athletic training purposes there are differences, but for fat loss, there aren't.

Furthermore, since I cannot measure the calories burned in post exercise recovery, it is reasonable to assume that both HIIT and MDI workouts actually burned a few more calories than I show. This is due to the after burn effect.

 And while the numbers are not huge, it is safe to assume that so our total calories burned in the HIIT and MDI workouts are relatively similar, and close to the equivalent of what was burned in a much longer LSD workout.

LSD burned a higher percentage of fat. It burned 25% vs. the 10% burned by MDI and HIIT. But, you have to devote more time to an LSD workout to see the benefit. 

So, the question becomes, is all that extra time worth burning a few more fat calories? In my mind, it's a rather small gain for all the extra time you have to spend to get the benefit.

Which brings us to the big conclusion: HIIT and MDI are more efficient and give us a great way to burn calories. But, they are too demanding to do every day. LSD can be done every day, but you better clear your schedule because you will need more time. Unfortunately, for many people long workouts 6 days a week are not an option.

Ultimately, you have to ask yourself two questions. Can you convince yourself to do hard training like HIIT and MDI? And, do you have time to do long workouts like LSD? If you work out with weights, too, you probably don't. Combining weights with LSD makes for a very long workout.

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