Lose Weight Faster? Should I Do Weights Or Cardio?

!±8± Lose Weight Faster? Should I Do Weights Or Cardio?

If you are intending to lose weight through regular exercise, you may have pondered over what to do in order to achieve weight loss in the shortest time possible. Will I burn more fats if I do weights or is it more effective to concentrate on cardio?

I think you will agree that when it comes to deciding which type of exercise to do, we may be confused as to where we should put our effort and focus on. We may have heard that cardio is the only way to go if you would like to blast all that fats! If you have been working on your crunches and neglected your cardio, no matter how toned your abs are, your belly will not look flat until the you get rid of the layer of fats on top of them.

Based on what is being discussed thus far, are we to be convinced that cardio is the way to go if we want to burn fats fast? Cardio workout can be boring for most people and it posed a great challenge to get that dose of cardio workout that your body needs. You may have drawn up a plan to do cardio exercises 3 - 5 times a week with each session lasting about 45mins to an hour. Before you change into your gym gear and hop onto that cardio machine and turn into the "hamster on the wheel" doing endless hours of boring cardio, you may be pleased to learn that interval training is much more effective in helping you burn more fats using the same machines in the same amount of time!

For beginners, you will need to start slow but for those who have been exercising regularly, challenging yourself with harder workouts is the best way to burn more calories and interval training is an excellent way to bring your routine cardio workout up a notch to torch more calories, train your heart and build endurance. Interval training involves alternating high intensity exercise with recovery periods and there are a variety of ways to set up interval workouts.

For e.g. if you are using any of the cardio machines in the gym (treadmill, elliptical machine, stepper, Stairmaster, etc.), instead of going for your normal routine, after a warm-up, crank up the intensity to get the heart-strengthening, calorie torching benefits of your cardio interval training by alternating faster intervals say 3 mins at level 10 and recover at 1-2 mins at say level 4. Depending on your fitness level, recovery period should allow you to be able to talk comfortably and when switch and alternate to a higher speed/intensity, you should feel that maximum effort is needed to converse. If you usually spend about 20-30mins on a cardio machine, you can draw up an interval training plan, increase or decrease the speed according to your fitness level.

If you are outdoors, you could choose to run or speed walk to something in the distance then slow down to recover, repeating the sprint when you feel rested, it works just as well. Interval training is meant to let you work harder than usual and to fully recover during the low intensity intervals. Not only does this help fight boredom, you will break out of the plateau and burn more calories which optimizes your cardio session and help you lose weight faster!

Many of us know that hitting the weights sculpts muscle and to help you lose weights faster and keep them off, building muscles is the way to go. We start losing our lean muscle mass as we start to age. Many people do not know that muscles help burn fats even at rest when you sleep at night. Therefore, the more lean muscle tissue you have, the more efficiently your body burns fats.

In conclusion, in order to lose weight faster and effectively, you have to work hard if you want to change the shape of your body. That means a balance of medium-high intensity cardio exercise along with challenging strength training workouts.