80. When Should You Increase Cardio For Fat Loss?

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Welcome to the Mind and My Wellness Podcast. Your podcast for all things macros, movement, mindset, and everything in between. I'm your host, Dani Merenberg, an ex yo yo dieting cardio junkie turned sustainable nutrition coach who's helped over 1000 women feel confident in their skin by learning.

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Mind and My Wellness Podcast. This is your host, Dani, and today we are focusing on fat loss. But specifically, we are focusing on a question I get asked as it pertains to helping increase or expedite fat loss. And that is, when should I be using cardio or when should I be increasing the cardio that I'm doing to help with promoting fat loss. And if you're anything like I used to be, I found myself doing hours and hours of cardio each and every week in an attempt to lose body fat, to lose weight. And I had this, like, extra layer on me, as I always describe it, that just would not shed. And I would try to burn all of my calories to close my apple watch rings every single day. I would run miles and miles and miles and then do hit classes and spin classes and all of the cardio. And yet I would never be able to sustain any fat loss, nor could I sustain the routine that I was doing long term. And ultimately it ended up wreaking havoc on my body and my hormones. And after now, working with a thousand plus women inside my practice, I have seen the same happen with them. One, it's not sustainable. Two, it's caused internal issues, whether that's hormonal, gut metabolism issues. So what I want us to focus on in this episode is if you have a goal of fat loss, I am breaking down the first four most important things to focus on before cardio, before we understand how to manipulate cardio for our fat loss phase. Because ultimately cardio has a place. Cardio definitely can be beneficial. But if you're not doing these four things first or taking these four things into account, you, your cardio is not going to be effective in your fat loss space. So let's dove right in. Number one is if you have a fat loss goal, the number one most important thing to do is be in a calorie deficit. You absolutely have to be in a calorie deficit to see fat loss. This is the most important factor for fat loss. A deficit is most easily achieved by controlling calories in versus maximizing calories out. So essentially, when we are in a deficit, we should be consuming fewer calories than we're burning per day. Now, this does not mean that the 300 calories that your apple watch is showing you that you've burned today is all that you've burned today. And also that is a very rough estimate of your active calories burned. You're burning far more calories than that on average. It's going to depend person to person, but your calories that you're burning per day are going to be like five times that or more. So when it comes to really understanding a calorie deficit, it comes down to making sure that you are consuming fewer calories than you are burning per day. Now, when we're trying to achieve fat loss, the time and energy it takes to burn 300 calories is significantly more than it would take to simply reduce your food intake by 300 calories. So it's a lot more effective to reduce your caloric intake versus then trying to burn and burn and burn more calories. Especially because there is a plateau there is a certain point in which once you burn a certain amount of calories per day, your body is not just going to continuously burn calories because your body needs to conserve energy. So a calorie deficit is the most important factor if you're looking for fat loss. You absolutely have to be in a calorie deficit of some sort to reduce overall body fat. That's number one. Number number two is going to be strength training. Strength training trumps cardio for fat loss. And let me explain why. Most importantly, strength training helps to preserve muscle mass in a deficit. Or if you're somebody who's brand spanking new to strength training, you can in fact actually build a bit of muscle while you're in a deficit. Now, this won't work for everybody because that is a specific goal that requires appropriate amount of calories consumed each day to build muscle. But for some that are less advanced in their strength training or, or beginners, you can experience some, some muscle development during a fat loss phase or during a calorie deficit. But it is extremely important that we are strength training to preserve muscle mass in a deficit. Now, muscle mass is going to trump doing any cardio because the more muscle we have on our body, the more calories we're burning at rest. So if you can build muscle, you're actually going to burn more calories by doing absolutely nothing than if you were to do cardio. Or you'd have to keep doing cardio over and over and over again. So we want to work to our advantage, right? We want to be smart. We want to almost like outsmart the system, right? So by doing that by building muscle, you are taking advantage of that. So by simply maintaining as much muscle as possible while losing weight by default, we are going to maximize our fat loss. Now, of course you can burn calories with cardio, but cardio is not going to help to preserve muscle mass in a deficit. In fact, if you're doing a little too much cardio or you're not balancing it out enough with your strength training, you're actually going to chip away at your muscle mass. And we don't want to do that. We want to make sure that we are preserving muscle mass. Not only from a, from an esthetic perspective, of course, yes, having that muscle mass in a calorie deficit, you're going to expose that. It's going to lead to that more toned, leaned physique. But it is so important for our, as we age, for our overall health, longevity, joint health, all of that. So it's extremely important and for our hormones, too. I feel like I should always call that out if it's not already known. But it is extremely, extremely important. So number two in the hierarchy of importance in a fat loss phase is going to be strength training over cardio. Number three is going to be recovery. Yes, when we're in a calorie deficit, it can be very, very challenging to recover from workouts because we have less energy. Calories are energy. So when we're restricting energy in our body, we can feel like it's a lot harder to recover from our workouts, especially if we're still trying to put in all of that work into those strength training workouts, or if we're trying to do strength training and cardio simultaneously. So if cardio is inhibiting the effectiveness of your strength training workouts, again, because that is second most important in a calorie deficit, to lose body fat, it is a net negative. You are not getting any benefit from doing the cardio that you're doing if it's interfering or getting in the way of your strength training to preserve your muscle mass. So that is number three. And then last but not least, number four, the fourth thing I want you to take into consideration and really assess if you're in a fat loss phase and incorporating cardio is time. For most people that I work with, we have limited time and resources. So in this hierarchy of importance, when it comes to, what should we really be focused on most in our calorie deficit, in our fat loss phase to see the best results, cardio is going to fall to the bottom of the list. It's going to fall below being in a calorie deficit, nutrition wise, of course, that's going to be number one. It's going to fall below strength training. And then, of course, we want to preserve our energy. But if at the end of the day you only have time for one or the other, let's say you only have time for a strength training workout or cardio, which one do you. Do you want to choose strength training? Because we want to preserve that muscle mass. We don't want to chip away at any muscle mass. Of course, being in a calorie deficit, you naturally will see a, a small reduction in muscle mass, even if you are trying to preserve muscle mass. So that's why strength training is so important when it comes to being in a calorie deficit and fat loss phase. So if you are doing all four of those things, you are prioritizing first your nutrition, you're in a calorie deficit following that by prioritizing strength training over cardio, you feel like you're recovering fine. You feel like your cardio is not inhibiting your strength training, but rather it's just adding to it, it's supplementing. Amazing. And if you feel like you have time to do both, you have time to get in your strength training workout effectively and incorporate some cardio, then, yes, you can incorporate cardio into your fat loss program your fat loss plan to help with chipping away at some body fat. But if at any point you see any of those four priorities, the calorie deficit, the strength training effectiveness, the recovery, or you're short on time, then the first thing to go is going to be your cardio. Now, if again, all of those things are working well and you're doing cardio and you feel like you have more in the tank, then you can try slowly increasing your cardio. What I would recommend doing is for an entire week, increase your cardio by 15 minutes, 20 minutes for the entirety of that week, see how you feel. And if you feel like you still have more in the tank, you can increase again the following week. But what I wouldn't do is go from zero to a hundred or, you know, let's say fifty to a hundred, you're doing some cardio and just kind of blow it out of the park and try to do as much cardio as possible because that can also have a negative, a net negative effect on your overall progress. So we want to prioritize these steps. In summary, number one, making sure you're in a calorie deficit, nutrition is going to be the most important for fat loss. Followed by strength training to preserve that muscle mass, then assessing overall recovery. Are you feeling like you are able to recover? Are you feeling good? And. And are you able to be efficient and effective with your strength training? Are you able to really push in your strength training still, if you are doing cardio or if you're not doing cardio and you notice that you're already struggling, pushing that, I would not add cardio in. And then last but not least is time. Do you have the time to do both, knowing that strength training is going to trump cardio? All right, I hope this episode was really helpful. I know that it's a bit of information, but if you ever have any questions, you can send me a DM over on Instagram at mindedmymacros and I'm happy to chat with you more there. But if you like this episode, please, please, please share with a friend who can benefit, maybe an accountability buddy. If you guys are going into a fat loss phase together and if you're looking for any support in your fat loss journey or body recomposition journey, I am here to support you. I have so many different programs plans that can help you on your journey, take out all the guesswork and get you right to your goal. So definitely reach out. And until next week, keep minding your wellness.

Thanks so much for tuning in to today's episode. I love hearing from you, so shoot me a DM over on Instagram at mindandmymacros to keep the convo going. If you've learned anything from this episode or any of my past episodes, I'd really love it if you took a few seconds to leave a quick rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I love hearing what you've learned or what you've taken away from any of these episodes. It means so much to me when you do that. And if you have any friends you know that need a little help kicking some old dieting mentalities to the curb and want some simple, effective and sustainable sustainable tips to feel their best, share a link to this episode with them. Thanks so much for listening and I'll catch you next time.