How much cardio to do to Lose weight I 6 Most Common Cardio Mistakes

YouTube, what is going on? Welcome back to the channel. Welcome to the video. In this video, we're going to be covering the top 6 mistakes when it comes to cardio. So without further ado, we're gonna dive right into the video in 3, 2, 1. Number 1, first most common mistake: using it as your main vice to try to lose weight. It's never gonna work. Remember, it takes you roughly, given the person and so on and so forth, it takes you roughly 50 to 60 minutes to burn 500 calories, right? And again, it could take much longer than that, by the way. And just a little side note to that, your Apple Watch or your Fitbit or the treadmill at the gym is not accurately tracking how many calories you burn. It is almost impossible to track how many calories you burn. Most of those devices are anywhere from, I believe the number was 27 to 92, 93% inaccurate, something around that range, right? So let's just call it half, right? 50% inaccurate. Let's say it says you burned 500 calories. You really probably burned like 200 to 300, probably somewhere in between that range. And so that's a whole separate story. But again, you're trying to use cardio as your main tool to lose weight. You're not actually burning that many calories when you do cardio. But on top of that fact, remember, like I said earlier, it takes 50 to 60 minutes to burn 500 calories. Let's just say it's just for easy math. It takes about 5 minutes to eat 500 calories. Let's be honest. I mean, you can have a PB&J and a piece of fruit, or you can have a Starbucks coffee. It'd take you 3 minutes. To drink 500 calories. So that math is never going to work out unless you plan on working out for 9 to 10 hours a day to try to offset the calories that you are eating. It's just, it's just never going to work. You've probably heard this before, you cannot out-train a bad diet. So stop trying to use cardio as your main tool, your main vice to lose weight. It's not gonna work out unless you have your nutrition in check first. The only way to lose body fat— if you're new to this channel, if you're not new to this channel, you know what I'm gonna say— the only way to lose body fat is through eating in a calorie deficit, eating less calories than what your body burns. And again, you're gonna ask me, but Eric, you just said I don't know how many calories my body burns. Yes, but you do know how many calories you are eating. So what you're gonna do is you're gonna track your calories that you eat and then you're gonna track your progress. If you're not seeing fat loss progress, if your weight isn't trending down over the course of a month, 2 months, 3 months, 4 months, if your measurements aren't going down, if your progress pictures aren't looking different, you are not eating less calories than what your body burns. And then from there, you know you are not in a calorie deficit. And so you don't need to worry about how many calories your body burns during a cardio session. Stop worrying about it. Cardio is not meant for You know, you to again be the main vice, the main tool for you to lose weight. Cardio is meant for your heart health. Cardio is meant for your cardiovascular health. Cardio is meant for, you know, some mental health as well. Cardio is not meant for losing body fat. Your nutrition takes care of the fat loss. Stop trying to use cardio as your main vice. And listen, like, if you want to throw in some cardio to help The process, like, that's great, but we're gonna talk about how that might look like in here because oftentimes, again, the most common mistakes, people don't use it correctly and it backfires. So that's number one, trying to use cardio as the main tool for you to lose weight. It is not going to work. Stop doing that. If you want to lose weight, make sure you have your nutrition in check first. If you're gonna ask me how many calories you should eat to lose weight, I have an entire video here on YouTube, so please feel free to check that out after this video. Awesome. Okay? Now, number 2, doing too much HIIT cardio, high-intensity interval training. It's all the rage right now. It has been all the rage for a few years. I am a big advocate for— the reason HIIT cardio, too much HIIT cardio can be a mistake and can actually be a downfall is because HIIT cardio is very taxing. It's very taxing on your body. It's taxing on your nervous system. It's taxing on your cardiovascular system. Like, it is a big stress that you are placing upon your body. So what happens is, again, going back to point number 1, people think, oh well, I'm gonna do cardio to lose weight. And they also think, oh well, HIIT cardio is gonna leave me very sweaty. I'm gonna burn the most calories. I'm gonna be out of breath. I'm gonna be dying. Clearly, if that's the case, Then I'm going to lose weight quicker. It's gonna be faster. I'm gonna speed up my progress. And that's where people's heads start to go. I understand why you would think that, but in reality it does not play out like that, and here's why. Number 1, like I just said, you don't actually burn that many calories doing cardio. And again, number 2, even if you did burn that many calories, you're gonna go home and just eat that right back. And so, like, it's, it's never gonna work out. That math is never gonna work out. But more so, number 2, Too much HIIT cardio is going to leave you incredibly fatigued, incredibly more hungry, making it substantially harder to stick to your calorie deficit, which, oh, by the way, we just found out the only way to lose body fat is through a calorie deficit. And if you're not in the calorie deficit, AKA through your nutrition, you're not going to see fat loss progress anyway. And so too much HIIT cardio, it's going to raise your cortisol levels. It's gonna raise your fatigue. You're gonna sleep worse. You're gonna be more tired. You're gonna have less willpower. All of these things are gonna lead you to not be able to stick to your nutrition as well because you're gonna have more cravings. Like, if you're more tired, more fatigued, and you have less willpower, more cravings, like, what is all this adding up to? All this is adding up to you, you know, eating more at night, eating more sweets, eating more sugar, not sticking to your diet. And that's why it will actually backfire. Fire on your weight loss goals. And so too much HIIT cardio is not a good thing. And listen, if you enjoy it, I am— listen, who am I to tell you otherwise? But just from what I've seen from clients and what research has told us, generally speaking, anywhere from— my gut is going to say 1 to 2 times a week of HIIT training. I'd say 3 times a week is the absolute max, but personally, I've never had a single one of my clients do 3 HIIT cardio sessions a week. I've just, I've just never done it. One to two times a week is the max, and honestly, with my clients and myself, I don't even really put in cardio because again, like your nutrition is what's going to take care of the fat loss. But if you enjoy that style of workouts and that style of training, that's great. Typically speaking, I would say try to keep it to one or two times a week max. That way you can do it. You can get your fix in. You can enjoy it. Kick ass. Do whatever you want to do, but you're not overdoing it. And that's where people go wrong is they overdo it with three, four, five, six, seven times a week, and it's like. No wonder you can't lose weight. Like, you're doing too much. More is not always better. Better is better. Remember that. And last but not least on this quick topic, most people who are overdoing HIIT cardio, if that's you, you're chasing a feeling. And let me explain what I mean. You're chasing a feeling of being sweaty, of being out of breath, of having a very, very high heart rate. You're chasing a feeling. Which again, you know, to each his own. But I would ask you, are you chasing a feeling or are you chasing results? Because that short-term feeling of you like having this high and having this high heart rate and being out of breath and feeling like you're dead, if that's causing you to not actually see results, are you just chasing a feeling or are you chasing results? Because you can probably chase that feeling by just like chasing a squirrel down the street. Like you're gonna be sweaty and out of breath and have a really high heart rate. So like Does that quantify as a good workout for you? Like, I'm not sure. But ask yourself if you're chasing a feeling or if you're chasing results. And I think you can do both. But again, like, if you're somebody watching this video and you're not seeing progress, you have to ask yourself what you're really chasing with your workouts. So that was number 2. Number 3, most common mistake, kind of along the same lines, trying to mix cardio with your strength training. Those are 2 separate things. You should be having a strength training program. And if you would like to have cardio separate from the strength training program, please, by all means. For example, let's say that you strength train 3 times a week and let's say you do cardio 2 times a week. That's amazing. Awesome. On your 3 strength training days, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you're going to strength train. That's what you do for that day. And of course, like encompassing all of this, like The biggest thing I tell my clients is let's set a step goal. That's like the biggest thing I tell my clients for like quote unquote cardio. That's why I don't ever really program direct cardio because most of my clients are getting, you know, anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 steps per day. And so that's not what I mean here. I mean like a dedicated like, oh, I'm gonna go hit the treadmill for 45 minutes or the elliptical for 45 minutes or, you know, the spin bike or whatever the case may be. That's the kind of cardio I'm referring to. And so, you know, if you have Monday, Wednesday, Friday workout and you want to do some cardio, I don't know, Tuesday and Thursday or like Tuesday and Saturday, whatever you want to set it up as, like, cool, go ahead. Um, but those are separate things. Like, stop trying to mix cardio and strength training. You are going to, you are going to submaximally get the most benefits out of both of those things. I don't know if I really said that right, but I'm pretty sure you get what I'm saying. You're not going to optimize both those things. If you're trying to mix cardio with weightlifting, you are going to lift less weights, which means you're not going to increase your strength, which is the point of a strength training program. You're not going to increase your strength. You're not going to increase your lean muscle mass, which means you wouldn't increase your metabolism, which means like all of this stuff comes into play. And so you're going to hamper your results on both ends. Like if you're doing cardio, Do cardio. If you're doing strength training, do strength training. Stop trying to take like 30-second rests in between your workouts and calling it like a strength training session. Like, no, like that's still cardio. You're just, you're just doing cardio at that point. A real strength training program requires you to actually, you know, rest. Take 2, 3, 4, sometimes minutes in between sets. Catch your breath, recover your muscles, recover your central nervous system. Push as much weight as you possibly can. I like to think about it like this. Let's say someone's like, hey, you're gonna go underwater and hold your breath as long as you can. Let's say you go underwater and the first time you hold your breath, you hold it for a minute straight, right? You come up and they're like, okay, cool, you get a 20-second break and you're gonna have to hold your breath as long as you can again. You're like, oh, fuck. Like, so the second time you go underwater holding your breath, but this time since you haven't actually recovered from the first time, you're still like out of breath trying to catch your breath. You go underwater and you only hold your breath for 40 seconds this time. The first time was 60 seconds. This time is 40 seconds. You come back up, you're like, it's all I got. I would fucking die if I stayed any longer. They're like, okay, cool. 20 more seconds and do it again. You're like, oh my God, I haven't recovered from the first time, let alone the second time. So since you have a 20-second break again, you got to go underwater again and hold your breath as long as you can. This time you only hold it for 25 seconds. You come back up and you're like about to die because you haven't caught your breath yet. That's essentially what you're doing with your strength training program. You saw each time, You held your breath underwater for a shorter duration of time. Your performance decreased because you weren't able to properly recover from the first set, right? So you do the same thing with your weight training. Let's say you do the first set is 3 sets of 10 with 30 pounds, but you only take a 20-second break. Next set, 2 sets of 8 with 25 pounds. Next set, 2 sets of 6 with 20 pounds. Each time your performance decreased. That's not good. That is not optimal for you to get the best results. This is better if you took 3 sets of 10 with 30 pounds, rested 2 minutes, 3 sets of 10 with 30 pounds, rested 2 minutes, 3 sets of 10 with 30 pounds. That would be better for your results in changing your physique, changing your body, getting stronger, building muscle definition, because you're allowing your body to recover and perform as well as it possibly can. Does that make sense? I hope so, because it's a very, very important concept if you're looking to see the best progress possible and help change your body. And so stop trying to mix cardio with strength training. Do it separately. And one last thing I'll say here is, I do this for a lot of my clients as well. If you like that feeling of like, you know, high heart rate and sweating and moving and all those kinds of things, great. That's again, nothing wrong with that. But like, for example, what I'll do sometimes is let's say I'm having a lower body workout day, right? Let's say the first 3 to 4 exercises are, you know, our main compound movements, our squats, our deadlifts, our lunges, those kinds of movements, right? If I know somebody wants to have that feeling, what I'll do is I'll set something called an EDT timer. And all EDT means is just escalated density training. And all that means is basically like you're kind of setting a timer and just trying to get as many rounds as you can. It's not though to the point where you're like sacrificing your form, you're never recovering, you're never catching your breath. This is more like a controlled, like, all right, cool, like let's see how many Let's see how many rounds we can get of these, call it 3 exercises, right? So what I'll do is I'll say, hey, you know, we're going to do walking lunges, sled pushes, and reverse crunches, right? And you set a 10-minute EDT timer and just work through those 3 exercises and get as many rounds as you can. That is going to get your heart rate up. It's going to get you moving. It's going to get you sweating. It's going to get all those things you're looking for, but you're actually still following a really good program because number one, you've already done your strength training. And number 2, you can work in some of that metabolic work, that more high heart rate kind of work that you may enjoy doing after you have already done your main strength training program. And again, this isn't— it's still not to the effect of complete cardio where it's like you're just running or doing burpees or doing whatever. And again, if you wanna do that, totally cool, nothing wrong with it. But in this instance, you can put kind of like a metabolic circuit at the end of your workout to kind of run through some movements, whether— again, you could do like— What'd I say? I said lunges, sled pushes, and reverse crunches, right? Work your legs, work your cardio system and your legs, and work, you know, your abs. Like, sweet. Like, go through that circuit, but that will give you a feeling while still getting tremendous progress. And so you can do like that, or again, you could do your cardio after your workout, which, by the way, I'm probably gonna get this question. You should try to do cardio after your strength training session if you're gonna do it on the same day, because you want to be fully You know, you wanna have the most energy and the most power going into your strength training session, not only to lift the most weight and see the best results, but also to avoid injury and so on and so forth. And so hope all that made sense. If you have any questions on that in particular, feel free to drop them below. All right. Number 4, this kind of piggybacks off of one of the things we talked about already, but sustainability. And basically what I'm trying to say here is so many people try to do cardio 5, 6, 7 days a week. And it's just, you have a life. I mean, unless you're watching this and your main job is to be a professional bodybuilder or, you know, step on stage or whatever the case may be, that's one thing and that's totally fine. Like, if that's you, I don't really think you're watching this video, but if it is you, then that's totally fine. That might be different. But if you have a job and kids and a spouse and a social life and all these other things going on, Well, guess what? Like, doing cardio 6 days a week is probably not going to last very long, honey. And if it is, you're just probably gonna hate your life. It's gonna suck and, like, you're gonna have to sacrifice a lot of things. And so, doing too much cardio in general is a huge mistake I see. Not only too much HIIT cardio, but too much cardio in general. Like, if you're trying to— I had a client one time, she came to me doing at least an hour and a half on the treadmill every single day. At the end of the night. And I was like, why are you doing that? And she's like, well, I gotta do my cardio. I'm like, for what? And obviously we unpacked and she's like, well, I gotta lose weight and da da da, this and that. But again, it was backfiring because she was doing too much cardio, she was getting really hungry, not sticking to her diet, all that stuff we just talked about played a role. But again, like, she was just kind of walking, you know, somewhat leisurely, but an hour and a half every single night, like, after you've done an entire day of working, Kids, parenting, cooking dinner, all these things, like you're gonna burn yourself out, man. It's, it's going to backfire on you. I promise you, more is not always better. Better is better. And so the whole concept of doing cardio, you know, 5, 6, 7 days a week, it's, it's not gonna be sustainable. And I don't care what your plan is on paper. If you can't stick with it, you're not going to see results. And this is often why people will tend to yo-yo with their weight where they go down and up and down and up. They do things like this, like 5, 6, 7 times a week cardio. They do it for, if they're lucky, 3, 4, 5 weeks and they'll lose some weight, but then they can't sustain that, so they go right back to doing what they were doing and then they gain all the weight back. And on top of that, you're not giving yourself a lot of flexibility. And this goes into sustainability, but if you have to do cardio 6 days a week and like, let's just say your kid gets sick, or let's say something crazy happens at work, or your car breaks down, or whatever the case may be, you had a really, really, really bad night's sleep. Whatever the case may be, tough shit. You gotta wake up and do an hour and a half of cardio 6 days a week. Like, good luck. And so it's, it's, you're, you're not giving yourself a lot of flexibility here. And this is why, again, like, well, I missed, you know, if I'm, if my program's 6 days a week and you missed a day, well, ruined all your progress. You fucked the whole week up. You might as well just quit and restart on Monday because you think this expectation of 6 days a week cardio, whereas opposed to if you had 2 days a week cardio, 3 days a week strength training, whatever the case may be. That's a lot more realistic. And so, you know, that's why for a lot of my clients I do, hey, 3 to 4 times a week strength training workouts, get your steps in throughout the day and throughout the week and you're good to go. And that's very sustainable. And sustainability and consistency is what breeds results, not perfection and doing the perfect plan. Like, that's great that you think 7 days a week of an hour and a half cardio is gonna help you, you just can't stick with it. And if you do stick with it, you're just gonna hate your life. Like the lady I told you about earlier, one of my clients, She was just like, yeah, like, this isn't fun. Like, I don't enjoy doing this. And I was like, well, I wouldn't fucking enjoy doing that either. And so, you know, sustainability, think about that when you're doing— when you're creating a program. Number 5, and this is really important too, using it for a tool to punish yourself for overeating. I'm gonna say it again, using cardio as a tool to punish yourself for overeating. Don't do that. Creates a very unhealthy relationship with food. And not to mention, you didn't do anything wrong. And not even just overeating, like if you ate a donut, you didn't do anything wrong. If you ate over your calories one night, God forbid, you didn't do anything wrong. A lot of people go wrong because they are like, oh my God, I messed up my diet. I went off the rails. I binged or I ate more food or I ate, you know, really quote unquote bad food, crappy food. And now I'm gonna wake up the next morning, go do 2 hours of cardio, sweat it all out, burn calories. And that just creates this cycle of like, you're gonna do that and then you're gonna be super hungry, super fatigued, super tired. That is then gonna lead you to then overeat, all the reasons we talked about earlier. So you're gonna overeat and you're gonna do that again and then you're just gonna think, oh my God, I fucked up again. So then you're gonna do a bunch of cardio again and like, that's gonna lead to binging and this whole cycle just happens over and over and over in perpetuity. Break it. You didn't do anything wrong by overeating one night. You didn't make all your progress in one night. You don't lose all your progress in one night. Just get up and get back on track the next day. Stop using cardio if you, you know, stop using cardio to burn off the bad food you ate or burn off the water weight or whatever the hell stupid things people do these days. Stop. You don't need to. Going over your calories one day is totally fine or I don't care how many calories. How many days you go over your calories? Using cardio as the tool to punish yourself for doing something wrong, it's never gonna work out for you. So just know that that's not gonna work. You didn't do anything wrong. You didn't fuck anything up. You didn't ruin your progress. It's all good. You don't need to do that, okay? And last but not least, I kind of touched on this already, but your cardio should be a— I almost wanna say like a 1A and 1B, but like, your strength training should be your primary focus. That is what you should focus on because strength training provides so many great benefits, as does cardio, don't get me wrong, but strength training provides so many benefits of increased bone density, not only right now but as you age, decreased insulin resistance, which is good as well, increased metabolism, increased lean muscle mass, which again, as you age, very, very important to keep your bone density, to keep your lean muscle mass, to keep your metabolism high. To have healthy, strong joints. All these things are going to improve the quality of life as you age. And again, not to say cardio doesn't have its benefits. I've already said cardio does have its benefits. And somebody's gonna type in the comment section, cardio is good for you. I'm not saying it's not, but I am saying strength training should be, in my humble opinion, your primary focus of your exercise. Cardio is just a, you know, a supplemental tool that you want to use, or if If you don't wanna use it at all, that's fine with me as well. But if you enjoy doing it, that should come almost like— I almost struggle to say secondary because I do think it's like 1A and 1B. Like, they're both important, but I do think strength training should come first and like cardio is just a separate entity. And so just be sure you're not basing your exercise program or your exercise in general around cardio. Base it around strength training. That should be your primary focus and then cardio can be Supplemented, you know, here and there. Again, I'll say it one more time, a lot of my clients, what we do is just track our steps and try to get 5,000 to 10,000 steps per day. That's pretty much all the cardio I do. That's actually, that is all the cardio I do, and sometimes I struggle to get 5,000, but I'm not gonna tell you that. Sometimes I struggle to get 5,000, but either way, getting your steps, hitting your strength training program, following a good nutrition plan, and that's really as simple as you need to make it. If you enjoy doing cardio, Add in a run here and there, add in a spin class, whatever the case may be, but again, you don't need to overdo it and you should have rest days. Like, this is such a foreign concept to people these days, but, you know, a rest day isn't doing 60 minutes HIIT session on the spin bike. Like, that's not a fucking rest day. A rest day is like, you know, actually resting and you do need those if you want to perform, feel your best, look your best, optimize your health. It's important. And so you don't need to do cardio 4 days a week and lift 3 days a week. 3 days a week or 4 days a week do your lifts, 1 or 2 days a week run, and, like, I mean, just have the other days to actually rest. If you wanna go on a walk, go on a walk with your kids. If you wanna go walk outside, go walk outside. If you wanna go on a bike ride with your kids, like, do those things. Great. But make sure you do have real rest days because those are important for not only your physical health but your mental health as well. So, guys, hope you enjoyed the video. Again, 6 most common cardio mistakes. If you did enjoy the video, please feel free to leave a thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel, hit the notification bell, leave a comment, and we'll talk next time. All right.