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Weight loss––cardio vs. resistance
PETE GLADDEN
Pete’s World
Published: May 21, 2018
I really have to roll my eyes every time I see yet another confusing infomercial that seems to tout a new miracle cardio contraption that’s supposedly the end-all-be-all for caloric burn and subsequent weight reduction.
And most of my incredulousness lies not in the contraptions, nor the high-handed claims being made to hawk them.
Nope, my criticism lies in the foundation behind said contraptions and claims, namely the belief that aerobic exercise is the panacea for weight loss.
My belief, on the other hand, lies in the opposing camp which asserts that resistance exercise can have much more of an impact on caloric burn and weight loss than all those endless hours of cardiovascular exercise on all those fancy aerobic contraptions.
Thus, with these two conflicting suppositions front and center, let’s sift through the psycho-babble and use science, via exercise physiologists’ research, to take a look at what I’ll call “the rest of the story” involved in this conundrum.
First, I’d like to demonstrate how these cardio contraption infomercials have cherry-picked their way through scientific evidence to support the supposition that cardio exercise is the first-class ticket to weight loss.
Now physiologists have spent decades calculating the caloric burn associated with various activities. And their years of information gathering has enabled them to create tables, which based on one’s body weight, type of exercise, volume, time and intensity level, can tell us approximately how many calories are expended.
So for the sake of simplicity, I’ll use myself to plug into one of these caloric burn tables to show you how scientific information can be winnowed to attain the needed outcome. Okay, I weigh 162 pounds, and if I were to run a moderate 8-minute mile pace for 30 minutes, calculations indicate I’d burn approximately 880 calories. Conversely if I were to do calisthenics like push-ups, pull-ups, lunges etc., at that same moderate intensity level for that same 30 minutes time, those calculations state I’d burn approximately 563 calories.
One could argue, based on this example, that aerobic exercise burns nearly twice as many calories as resistance exercise, proving all those infomercials correct. But not so fast, because this assumption is based solely on a session to session comparison, with no data given for the post-workout physiological benefits. As such, one gets a false picture of what’s really going on.
And this is what the rest of the story reveals, what those tables––and those infomercials––don’t. Namely, that over time, building lean muscle tissue through resistance training can increase one’s basal metabolic rate (how many calories the body burns while at rest). And that seemingly inconspicuous physiological process can translate in BIG caloric deficit numbers.
How? Because muscle tissue is the most metabolically active tissue in the body, consuming calories on a 24/7 basis. A pound of muscle tissue will burn seven to 10 calories daily per pound. Compare that to fat, which burns two to three calories daily per pound. So remodeling the body simply by replacing a pound of fat with a pound of muscle, well, that basal metabolic rate number just goes up higher and higher.
By incorporating resistance training in your fitness regimen, you could reasonably expect to gain three to five pounds of muscle mass in three to four months. That remodeling of body tissue translates into the burning of 21 to 50 additional calories per day. And remember, that’s free caloric burn 24/7.
By the same token, because aerobic exercise is more of a cardiovascular activity than a musclular resistance activity, it cannot elicit that round-the-clock “calorie burning” effect on the body that resistance exercise can.
Bumping up ones basal metabolic rate can have a much more dramatic effect on the caloric burn, so much so that physiologists have determined building lean muscle tissue is actually THE key to increasing one’s metabolism.
But don’t take my word for it. There are a gazillion studies out there that support this thesis, and for the sake of brevity I’ll use results from an oft cited study, the April 2001 edition of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. Researchers found that at the end of 26 weeks of resistance training, participant’s basal metabolic rates had increased by 7 percent, providing the burning of approximately 100 extra calories per day.
It’s pretty simple math really: Increased basal metabolic rate = more calories burned = weight loss. I rest my case.