Fitness instructor lies: Cardio is the best way to burn fat

I am not a professional instructor of anything but I do know what has worked for me in the past and I know what hasn't. I hear instructors all over the place who are trying to sell their courses or spin classes that were very popular pre-Covid that you gotta get more cardio in if you want to burn off that fat. Cardio is important, I have figured that our in the past year when I stopped all cardio and focused on only weights but cardio is NOT the best way to burn fat.

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There are so many lies in the fitness industry because it is worth billions of dollars a year and everyone wants their piece of the pie. We saw this lie perpetuated by group cardio classes at major gyms and studios and it is easy to understand why they would do it. A personal trainer can only train one or two people at a time for a real workout like weights or HIIT, but with a spin class or aerobics of some sort they can train 50 people or more at a time. Obviously this is going to make them and the studio a lot more money so they try to sell everyone on the option.

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_{there's a lot of money in the distance there}

Here is why this is, always has been, and always will be a lie. For starters, it isn't possible to target fat in anything that you do. The body doesn't work that way at all. Your body will use the most readily available source of fuel in your body and unfortunately, fat is one of the last things it goes after. Sure if you do a TON of cardio you will burn fat but this is still only if you establish a caloric deficit (burning more calories in a day than you consume) and this is the most difficult part of the situation for most people. Nobody likes to go to bed hungry and eating salads all day long gets boring pretty fast.

There is also the question of plateauing in any cardiovascular exercise. When you first start, a 1km run might seem really tough but you will start to get results and improvement in just two weeks of 3x a week exercise. If you don't have the wherewithal to up the difficulty, you are not going to see any additional gains.

The real way to burn fat is to one, focus on diet first, and two, get involved with a wide array of exercises including and especially some strength training with weights. I know I just finished talking about how my weights only approach was a failure but that is only because I was disappointed that all of my cardio endurance had disappeared after just two months. The reality of the situation was that my weights only approach actually resulted in me being much leaner, even though I gained weight in the process.

Time and time again studies show that the more muscle you have, the more calories your body will burn when you are at rest and this is when the real, prolonged and lasting weight loss occurs. Believe it or not the fat loss isn't going to happen while you are exercising, it happens when your body becomes stronger, therefore needs more fuel just to operate, and therefore burns calories around the clock, not just while you are running or doing a spin class.

Another problem with the cardio only approach is that while you will build muscle, these are generally very concentrated exercises when we are dealing with running or riding a bicycle. The rest of your body isn't going to build muscle and you could actually be encouraging muscle loss in the rest of your body if your exercises are leg-centric.

I saw this the other day and it basically sums up how I feel about fitness and the goals that I have reached in the past 6 years of my life when I started taking diet and fitness somewhat seriously.

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Once again I want to point out to anyone out there that I am NOT saying to skip cardio. Cardio is definitely more beneficial to overall health and it is a very important part of fitness. However, if your objective is to lose weight and / or tone your body, weights are the scientifically proven method to make this happen. If the trainers that are selling the spin classes were being honest, they would also tell you this but since it cuts into their wallet, they won't tell you this.

_{still not a licensed trainer and am unlikely to ever do so... but I did lose over 50 lbs in my 40s which is one of the most difficult times in one's life to do so. I strongly believe that if a beer guzzling fella like me can do it, so can almost anyone else}