By It’s time to stop focusing on one method alone in the battle to lose weight
For years, females have been stuck on the cardio treadmill to lose weight and alter their body shape. To an extent, cardio is great. When we think about the long-term effects of too much cardio, it can wear out both our bodies and health. The problem isn’t cardio — it’s focusing on one thing, day in and day out and doing too much of it. Plus, many people may suffer from injuries due to over-exercising and cannot use methods like HIIT for beneficial weight loss results. SOME PEOPLE ROLL THEIR EYES whenever I mention HIIT, and I get that. However, many people cannot perform at this level for various reasons, and you don’t need to for weight loss. Yes, that’s right, there is another way to bypass the cardio and focus on lifting weights only! This is the very thing I have been doing for years after spending my life as a slave to cardio. Lead researcher and PhD student Pedro Lopez conducted various studies on the benefits of weight training. His findings showed that resistant training could significantly affect fat mass, muscle mass, and weight loss — all at once. (which you should already know if you train with weights). Upon mentioning obesity, we automatically move towards cardio as a means of weight loss and altering our body shape. A particular research paper shows that we can use resistance training and achieve meaningful effects with a diet based on caloric reduction. These methods can reduce body fat percentage, whole-body fat mass, body weight and BMI. If you want to compare the literature — these effects are similar to aerobic exercise with a caloric reduction in adults who are overweight or obese. As Mr Lopez mentions, it’s so important that people who are obese have another option — besides aerobic exercise as a means for weight loss. People who are obese may be very uncomfortable sitting on a bike or a treadmill for 30–40 minutes. Doing this might cause knee injury and painful ligaments and joints, and because they have extra weight to carry, it can make aerobic exercise much more challenging. Resistant exercise benefits because it helps to avoid muscle loss through dieting. It would help if you cut calories, no matter what exercise method you use to lose weight. But it’s also important to understand that too much cardio can assist in losing muscle mass — which weight training helps you maintain. Loss of muscle mass means diminishing metabolism along the way. Weighting boosts our metabolism — slightly elevating as you build more muscle. Either method still makes us susceptible to losing muscle mass- but you are more likely not to lose a lot with weight training. One of the best methods I’ve used is weight training and walking more — that’s it. Walking is low impact, easy on the joints and something you can do several times a day to help give you micro boosts in your metabolism. It also helps to be active and sit down a lot less. A standing desk can help you with this challenge if you have a desk job. Overall, you want to ensure the method you use can last a lifetime -and weights seem to be the most realistic option. So, please don’t dismiss exercise entirely according to your size or fitness levels. Start with the basics of weight training through a personal trainer and lower your caloric intake. I guarantee you will experience more success than if you are doing cardio alone.
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