Cardio Versus Weights For Weight Loss I Walk & Talk With E Ep 004
In this solo Walk & Talk episode, Eric Roberts explains why strength training should be the primary focus for weight loss, while still emphasizing the importance of daily walking. He shares his personal experience of losing 23 lb in eight weeks by walking 10,000 steps a day and outlines how building lean muscle boosts metabolism, improves body composition, and provides a more satisfying progress metric than scale weight alone. Roberts stresses the need for a structured strength program, describing how to calculate total training volume (tonnage) to track strength gains and boost motivation. He also discusses the psychological benefits of tracking strength improvements, offering self‑compliments, and reducing stress through low‑intensity walking. Finally, he gives a concise prescription: walk 5,000–10,000 steps daily, strength train 3–5 times per week with progressive overload, and maintain a calorie deficit for optimal weight‑loss results.
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What is going on, guys? Welcome back to another episode of Walk and Talk with E. Hope you're well. Hope you are getting out for your walks as well. Listen, actually, I don't know where you are. This could— it could not be this, but it's summer where I am, about to be summer. So gotta get outside for walks. It's like 90 degrees right now out here. So if it's even remotely warm where you are, you should be getting out for a walk. And if not, get a bundle up, man. One of the biggest things actually that helped me lose 23 pounds in 8 weeks was getting outside for a, uh, I think I walked about 10,000 steps a day. It's one of the biggest things that can help with weight loss. And so if you are looking to change your body composition, get outside and get your damn walks, man. So today's Walk and Talk, we're gonna be talking about the difference between cardio versus weights when it comes to losing weight. It's funny, I'm gonna contradict myself, what I just said, but actually I hold by that. Walking is very important for weight loss. I'm always gonna hold by that. But that being said, when it comes to what you should be prioritizing, I wholeheartedly believe you should be prioritizing strength training, weightlifting over cardio. And that's for so many reasons. I'll try to cover all of them here in this short video. Uh, don't know if I'll be able to, but I'll try to cover them. So we'll start with when it comes to your body composition changes. So Strength training. Strength training helps you build lean muscle mass, which number one, if you think out there you are going to like get big and bulky, which like, you know, I wish I was big and bulky. If you think you're going to get big and bulky from working out 3 to 4 days a week, trust me, I've been trying to get big and bulky my entire life and it still hasn't happened. So it takes a long fucking time and a lot of effort and Probably some steroids or drugs that I don't have right now. So that's number one. But more so, number two, lean muscle mass is a good thing. You want lean muscle mass because of so many reasons. Number one, it's going to help your metabolism. So if you are looking to lose body fat, what's one of the biggest things people always ask me what to do? How can I increase my metabolism, Eric? What can I do to increase my metabolism? Do I take this pill? Do I take that pill? Do I do this diet? Do I do that diet? No. Build some lean muscle mass, because the more, the more lean muscle mass you have on your body— muscle mass requires more oxygen to get pumped to your muscles, right? So more oxygen pumped means more work done. More work done means more calories burned. More calories burned means a higher metabolism. Right, so if you are having more lean muscle mass, you're automatically— Let's go, let's go! That's a race. That's nice, that's nice. Somebody just raced and they won. Um, where was I? So yeah, the more calories you burn, the higher your metabolism is. So see, this is why going out for walks, it's nice. Um, the more lean muscle mass you have, more calories burned. That's gonna help your weight loss. But number 2, So many people tell me that like, Eric, I, you know, I'm losing weight, but I don't look the way I wanna look. It's like, well, you don't look the way you wanna look because you don't have any lean muscle mass. And this happens so much when people lose like massive amounts of weight, call it 60, 70, 80, 100 pounds, and they did it through very low calories and only cardio. And they get to the end, they're like, what the fuck? Yeah. I don't look anything like what I wanna look like. What the hell is this? Or they feel like gypped almost. That's because if you just lose weight, you're probably, you know, if you do it in that modality, very low calories and a bunch of cardio, you're gonna lose, if you had any lean muscle mass, you're gonna lose it. So when you get to the end, you're not gonna look the way you wanna look anyway. So you're gonna have to spend the time building lean muscle mass regardless. So why not do it right now as opposed to waiting until the end? I also get people ask me, well, should I just wait to start building muscle and start lifting weights until I lose more body fat? No, no, not at all. Do that shit right now. Like I just said, people get to the end of their journey and they think the end of their journey, and they're honestly so upset because they don't look the way they wanna look. And so start right now. But that lean muscle mass, that's what's going to allow you to have that look, right? And I'm sorry if there's wind. I apologize. That's what's gonna allow you to have that look, that look you're going for, that lean, toned, defined aesthetic look, right? Lean muscle mass is that for you. So if you are not strength training, you're not going to get that. 'Cause unlike a calorie deficit where all you have to do to lose body fat is eat in a calorie deficit, if all you had to do was eat in a calorie surplus to build muscle, I would be the biggest, most muscular human being in the world because I can put some food down, right? But the only way you're going to build muscle is through a properly, intelligently designed strength training program. And I say that because, listen, you know, you doing YouTube videos or random HIIT workouts is better than nothing, and it's— you're still exercising. But there's a difference between exercising and training. Those are 2 different things, right? You following a real training program is vastly different, and again I apologize for the wind. Vastly different than YouTube videos or random HIIT workouts or things along those lines, right? So you want to make sure you're following a structured strength training program, which by the way I believe I have a video here on my channel about how to create a workout program. I think it's literally what it's titled: How to Create a Workout Program. So if you need some extra help with that, go check it out. But For those 2 reasons, it's gonna help your metabolism and it's going to help build the physique you want. That's why you should be focusing on lean muscle mass. Now, number 2, kind of piggybacking off those things, that's more of like the physical side of things, right? It's gonna help with your goals. But more so, what I've seen just coaching hundreds of people, thousands of people by now, it gives you something other than just like An aesthetic weight loss number on the scale, measurements down, inches down, progress pictures. It gives you something else to focus on. I can't tell you how many of my clients we get on a proper strength training program and they're like, man, Eric, you know, last week I did this side plank for 35 seconds. This week I got 38 seconds. Man, Eric, at the start of this 4-week program, You know, we were squatting 20 pounds for 10 reps. I'm up to 30 pounds for 10 reps. And, you know, one of the biggest things I love doing with my clients is looking at their— it's a little hack— looking at their total volume. So looking over what professional weightlifters use is something called total tonnage total volume, right? What this is, is you take your reps times your sets times the weight you use. So let's just say, for example, you did 4 sets of 10 with 50 pounds, a 50-pound dumbbell. So you think you're lifting 50 pounds. In reality, if you take the total tonnage, 4 times 10, 40, times 50, 2,000, right? 40 times 50, 4 times 5, 20. Yeah, right? That's right. 2,000. It's not 200, right? 2,000. I'm pretty sure it's 2,000. Now, if you ask me, it's pretty badass. And that's just one exercise. Think about all of the exercises you are doing during your training program. And where I'm going with this is whenever I tell my clients that, they automatically feel like a fucking badass. Like, they just feel strong. Like, they just feel good. And if the reason— what I'm getting to is if you're always focusing on Numbers down on the scale, numbers down in inches. It's everything is just tearing your body down as opposed to building your body up. A lot of these journeys that people go on, it's all— that's all it's about, man. It's all about weight loss and it's never, you know, never giving yourself credit and never giving yourself praise. And it's very— it can be very fickle at times, but you know, it's very hard to look at your Squats, for example, and say, hey, on week 1, I was squatting, you know, 50 pounds for 8 reps. On week 4, I'm squatting 60 pounds for 10 reps. It's really hard to look at that and say, hmm, I didn't improve, or I didn't get better. Like, you almost like have to give yourself a compliment, which I know is so fucking— God forbid, it's so fucking hard for some people to give themselves a goddamn compliment. But it's almost hard not to give yourself a compliment. And this is huge because if you can give yourself compliments, if you can enjoy the journey, if you can focus on building yourself up and not just tearing yourself down, the journey is going to be a lot more enjoyable. The journey is going to be something that you actually enjoy, look forward to, and you continue with, right? It's now no longer just like, oh my God, dreading getting on the scale. dreading the progress pictures, like dreading these things that are just tearing your body down, you now have something to build your body up. And it's just so fucking important, especially in like a, in a weight loss journey, which is kind of the topic of this video, is like cardio or weights for, for fat loss. I wholeheartedly believe you should be following a properly designed strength training program for all the reasons I just listed. And listen, like I started this video and I'm doing right now, Walking, walking. It's and actually it's funny because I used to think like this when I was you know sixteen, seventeen, eighteen-year-old Eric. I'm like oh walking's not a workout. What are people doing walking? It's so pointless now. Like I want to go back and smack myself in the fucking face. Goes to show you we all make mistakes. But that being said, walking great form of cardio. Get like for all my online coaching clients what we do is like get five to ten thousand steps a day. Anywhere in between that range, 5,000 to 10,000 steps a day. If you do that, man, number one— What? Man? If you do that, man, man, you are going to— like we said, you're gonna— yeah, you're gonna burn more calories, but it's also just like, listen, get out in nature, get out and walk, and like go for a walk and, you know, let your brain kind of clear a bit. We all have so many things going on in our day-to-day lives, whether you are a parent and you have kids, or, you know, you work at a school, or you, you know, you're a lawyer, whatever the case may be. I'm sure you have some stress, and oftentimes— correct me if I'm wrong— oftentimes that stress leads you to eat this food or not work out and so on and so forth because you don't— like, that's your way of coping with that stress. So if you get outside for walks more and actually find ways to better cope with that stress— Less stress, sticking to your diet better, hitting workouts more. All this stuff starts to magically fall in place just from like low intensity, getting 5,000 to 8,000 steps per day. Like right now, I mean, listen, I don't walk much. I should walk more. A little out of breath, but like, I'm not like dying. Like I'm not like drenched in sweat. I can carry a conversation, right? So I would say cardio like this where, you know, you're walking a bit lower intensity. I don't typically lean towards the higher intensity steady state cardio because Very hard to recover from. If you're already strength training, it's gonna be hard to, you know, if you're strength training 3 times a week and trying to do HIIT cardio 2 to 3 times a week, it's a lot to recover from. And if you can't recover from your workouts, I think this was the last topic talk or the second to last topic talk or the walk and talk. If you're not recovering from your workouts, then it's not gonna help you, right? So get out, get 5,000 to 10,000 steps a day. You don't need to get 20,000 steps a day. Get five to ten thousand steps, strength train three to five times a week, and most importantly for weight loss, as we know, eat in a calorie deficit. If you do those three things, boil it down, simplify things. If you do those three things, walk five to ten thousand steps, strength train three to five times a week with an emphasis on getting stronger, lift more weight, do more reps, be a fucking badass, and eat in a calorie deficit. If you do those things, man. Promise you, your journey is going to be a lot more enjoyable. All right, guys, that was the Walk and Talk with E. Hope you enjoyed it. Look out for the next one, and, uh, we will chat soon. All right.
