Fact or Fiction? Cardio Alone Is Enough to Lose Weight

Cardio exercises are exercises that increase your heart rate and help improve your blood circulation, such as running, cycling, swimming, rowing or jumping on a trampoline. Cardio has many benefits, and it will certainly help you burn calories, but if you want to lose weight, you need to do more than just cardio. In this blog, we will explain why.

Training the heart and lungs

The word “cardio” comes from the Greek word “kardia”, which means “heart”. Cardio exercises are exercises that train your heart and lungs to work more efficiently. This can be walking, cycling or swimming, for example. It helps you burn calories, strengthen your heart and lung system and reduce the risk of certain health problems, such as heart disease and diabetes.

It's about the negative energy balance

If you want to lose weight, it’s not just about the number of calories you burn during exercise. It’s about how many calories you burn in total in a day, and how many you eat. If you burn more calories than you eat, you will lose weight: a so-called negative energy balance. When you do cardio, you burn calories, that’s for sure. But anyone who thinks they can lose weight by only doing cardio exercises will most likely be disappointed. A brisk walk or a long bike ride also makes you hungrier. And the number of calories you burn through cardio training is easily overestimated. Someone weighing sixty kilos burns about 400 kilocalories by running for half an hour, but one Chai Tea Latte from Starbucks quickly contains 255 kilocalories. Add a brownie to that – because you did your best – and you’re already at 630 kilocalories in total. So if you don’t also adjust your diet, the chance that you will lose weight is slim.

Benefit from the afterburn of strength training

If you also combine your cardio exercises and a suitable diet with strength training, then the chance of success is greatest. Energy is needed to maintain muscles. The more muscles, the more energy must be burned and the higher your metabolism. This does not only happen during training, but also afterwards. This afterburn effect ensures that your body consumes more calories for several hours after it has come to rest. A kilo of muscle burns about 12 kilocalories, fat mass only 4. Every kilo of muscle that your body gains provides you with seventy to a hundred kilocalories per day. A muscular body works harder at rest, in short, a better combustion, also at rest.

Make sure you have the right combination

So if you want to lose weight, it is important to have a balanced mix of cardio and strength training, together with a healthy and balanced diet. Complicated? By training with the Milon circle, you train your entire body in six 35-minute workouts every month. This way you can be sure that you benefit from the perfect combination of strength and cardio. Thanks to the guidance of your own personal lifestyle coach, you can be sure that you will lose weight sustainably, without yo-yoing.