Cardio vs Calories

I have a new client and she’s keeping a food diary for the first time.

The app she’s using is counting her steps and telling her how many extra calories she’s allowed to eat because of all her steps.

“Lucia! I walked for half an hour and it was only 100 calories! I never knew that to eat 1 cookie I would have to walk for so long! ”

People think that cardio burns calories and therefore when they go to the gym they can eat more.

But what they don’t realise is the calorie content of food makes most cardio (for weight loss) negligible.

Let’s say you do a 30 minute jog on the treadmill, depending on how much you weigh you’ll burn around 250/300 calories. By the end of it you’re hot, sweaty, out of breath and HUNGRY.

So you eat ONE of these:

2 slices of wholemeal bread
1 small bowl of pasta
3 cookies
1 bowl of cereal
1 chocolate bar

All of which are around 300 calories, and you’re right back where you started in terms of calories burned and weight lost.

And it’s the same for all types of endurance cardio; treadmills, cross trainers, exercise classes, spin etc.

The secret to burning more calories is not doing more cardio, it’s building more muscle. Because muscle is thermogenic and requires a lot of calories to sustain it.

Building more muscle also raises your metabolism, meaning you burn more calories more quickly.

It’s time to swap cardio for something that actually works.