I talk to a lot of women who have goals of losing 10-15 lbs this year or again, and most often, I hear this, “I’ll just hit the cardio hard.” While they’re not wrong that cardio is great for burning calories, this isn’t the whole story.
By doing tons and tons of cardio like running, eliptical and the stair climber, we’re telling our bodies to be more efficient and to adapt. Good, right?
Well, sort of.
Cardio is one of the best ways to burn calories, in the moment. But it’s terrible over time. We put stress on the body by running, our body sends a signal to adapt or change, but then over time, our bodies don’t want to change anymore.
I’m going to link this to a great article by the MindPump fellas, but here’s a quote from Sal, “This is what happens to the body with cardio. Because it burns a lot of calories your body “learns” to burn less both during activity and especially when you are sedentary. Since cardio vascular activity doesn’t require lots of muscle your body simply reduces muscle mass as part of this adaptation. This is why long distance runners have skinny stick legs. In fact over time doing tons of cardio will even change hormone profiles to further slow your metabolism down.”
So tons of cardio actually slows down your metabolism. Wha?! Crazy right?! But what you can do is LIFT WEIGHTS! Lifting weights also sends a signal to your body to adapt and change, but over time this signal gets stronger instead of working against you.
So, does this make you want to switch to weights yet?!
MindPump media article – HERE
