What’s Better for Fat Loss?: Cardio vs. Lifting

It’s an age-old question in the fitness industry.

Is cardio better than lifting for fat loss or better body composition results?

But as any good Coach will tell you — the answer is that there is no one “best” approach, and that it “usually depends”.

They can both be beneficial for fat loss and lean muscle definition, but one is above the other (we’ll get into that later)

Each modality will help improve body composition, both improve cardiovascular health, boost metabolic rate and burn calories.
But it’s how you structure resistance training or cardio that will have the biggest impact on your body, performance in the gym and long-term results.

Later on, we’ll dive into some of the potential benefits and setbacks of each. Then we’ll go through what’s more optimal for you, and some examples of how to structure your training for the best outcome.

CARDIO:

Let’s get stuck right in and talk about cardio. To give you the whole picture — we’re going to break down HITT and LISS (Low Impact Steady State) cardio.

HIIT is carried out for short bursts of high-intensity effort, spaced with low-intensity effort. An example would be 30-sec max effort followed by 1–2 minutes of low intensity, which can be repeated for 5–8 intervals.

LISS is carried out for a long duration at a steady pace usually lasting anywhere between 20–40 mins and can be anything from walking, biking, or using the cross-trainer.

There’s even arguments about which form of cardio is better for overall body composition.
The common theory is that HIIT must be better because it must burn more fat, given its higher energy output and greater intensity.

That’s one theory.

HIIT does create an EPOC effect (post exercise oxygen consumption) in the body. This is what people mean when they talk about “burning calories after exercise”. And although the EPOC effect is real, overall it doesn’t add up much when we’re talking about body composition change.

There is no EPOC effect from LISS cardio, but you will generally burn more calories during a session (given the longer timeframe), but again overall this might not make as much of a difference long term.

HIIT is definitely more intense and you will burn a greater number of calories after the session. LISS isn’t as intense — but you’ll burn a greater number of during the session.
So what’s actually better for fat loss?

If you’ve been paying attention, you can probably guess the answer — BOTH!

You’re going to burn calories no matter you do. The distinction comes down to preference, what works better with your schedule and what improves adherence.

Like with any training modality, both have their advantages and drawbacks. You might have heard too much HIIT will kill your muscle growth, or that LISS is the ultimate way to build fitness.
Let’s look at some of the benefits and drawbacks of both.

HIGH INTENSITY INTERVAL TRAINING (HIIT):

• HITT is much more time efficient than LISS as your alternating intervals of high intensity output that can realistically be sustained for 30–40 minutes max if you’re training with intent.
• HIIT has been shown to reduce appetite from increased levels of lactate and blood glucose, along with a reduction of ghrelin (the hunger hormone).
• That being said, the high intensity nature of HITT means a greater recovery time in order to see adaptation. Your nervous system will take a hit, your cortisol levels will always be elevated and you increase your risk of injury. If you’re following a lifting program as well as doing cardio — HITT training might be redundant if you want to see significant results from that.

LOW IMPACT STEADY STATE CARDIO (LISS):

• LISS on the other hand doesn’t produce a significant stress response in the body, it’s low-impact on the joints and speeds recovery by flushing lactate and moving fresh blood through the muscles.
• LISS workouts will take much longer to achieve the same calorie “burn” as HITT sessions, and may get boring over time, decreasing adherence to the program.

Cardio training has a whole host of health benefits for longevity, but it may not be so efficient when it comes to body composition change.
This is because the body adapts very differently to cardio than it does to strength training, and when the body is more readily able to fuel these workouts, you’ll use less energy and burn less calories. While you might notice a change in performance and metabolism initially, after repetition over time this becomes easier and you no longer notice the same adaptations you did before and the overall change in body composition stalls.

This is because our bodies are constantly adapting to the stress applied by the stimulus (the workout) and will reserve as much energy and burn as few calories as possible to support the output of energy during training.

You could do longer cardio sessions, but depending on how much time you have this isn’t as efficient.
It’s also difficult to change the stimulus and add variety, as most gyms only have a few different pieces of cardio equipment, and there’s only so much walking you can do before it bores you senseless.

LIFTING:

Male, female, young, old, elite athlete or sedentary job — everyone can and will benefit from strength training.

Resistance training builds lean muscle tissue, boosts metabolic rate, regulates hormone production, sex drive, builds healthy bone mass, increases strength, improves posture and even increases longevity.

Lifting is essential for body composition as the more lean muscle tissue you carry the faster your resting metabolism will be.
This is because muscle is much more metabolically active than fat and the body will use more calories to keep it on your frame. Simply put, you will burn more calories at rest than someone who doesn’t lift, and receive all the hormonal benefits along with it.

One of the biggest benefits you’ll get from lifting that you won’t from cardio is the elevated of anabolic hormones, which will stay elevated for 15–30 minutes post-workout (ever heard of the anabolic window???). These hormones include testosterone, growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) which are important for tissue growth, improving muscle strength, increasing insulin sensitivity and resetting the baseline hormone concentrations to regular levels.

Another major benefit is that our bodies don’t adapt to the stimulus as quickly as it does with cardio. This is important because of how much variation there is within resistance training.

Training phases, exercise selection, workout sequencing and methods like tempos can all manipulate the adaptations created by lifting weights. Even changing equipment across your program can add a different stimulus to your training.
The body will become accustomed to particular stimulus, but because it is being challenged constantly from so many different variables (tempo, load selection, sets & reps etc.) it’s easy to create a different stimulus with ease.

However, like everything, resistance training has it’s drawbacks, such as;

• Junk volume: bad form will stall progress, even if you’re doing plenty of sets and reps. Focusing on nailing the technique and building the right mind-muscle connections can literally change your physique if you give it the attention it deserves.
• Too much intensity, frequency & volume: If you’re not paying attention to how many sets & reps your doing, how much weight you’re moving and how much time you’re spending on each muscle group, then I can guarantee you won’t build muscle the way you want to.
• Risk of injury: Remember what we said about bad technique? Lifting with poor form exponentially increases your odds of injury and setbacks. Bad shoulders, sore backs, and grindy knees are the most common signs that you’ve been lifting too heavy, and too badly, for a long time.

Let’s look at how you can structure lifting and cardio into your week, with a focus on smarter training and recovery. For these examples, I’ve used a 4 day training split:

4 Days Strength + HITT:

→ Monday: Upper Body

→ Tuesday: Lower Body, HIIT

→ Wednesday: Rest

→ Thursday: Upper Body

→ Friday: Lower Body, HIIT.

→ Saturday/Sunday: LISS or Rest.

We add HIIT on the back of lower body days to keep these days as your higher nervous system-taxing days. This allows for enough recovery in between sessions, so you don’t get burn out coming into the end of the week.

4 Days Strength + LISS:

→ Monday: Upper Body

→ Tuesday: Lower Body

→ Wednesday: LISS

→ Thursday: Upper Body

→ Friday: Lower Body

→ Saturday: LISS

→ Sunday: Rest

This example uses LISS as an active form of recovery in between lifting sessions.
Personally, this is my preferred split as the LISS days improves recovery and keeps your energy expenditure high, without being too taxing on the nervous system.

To wrap things up, I believe that if you seriously want to improve your body composition then your focus needs to be on building and maintaining lean muscle through resistance training.
This should be the #1 priority as the benefits on your metabolism, hormone regulation and production, strength improvements and increased longevity are unbeatable.

That being said, if you love doing cardio then you can add 1–2 sessions a week of HITT or LISS, depending on what you prefer and what is better for your recovery and training adherence.

If you’re following a good training program, managing your nutrition, working on your NEAT and taking enough recovery time between sessions, then the bases are already well & truly covered.

Personally, I think that you always want to add the minimal amount of stimulus to create the response you want. That doesn’t mean workout less — just don’t workout more than you need to.
That way, you’re likely to be more adherent and more consistent if your training is easier, achievable, sustainable and enjoyable.