Why Only Doing Cardio For Fat Loss Fails

For most of my school life I had massive cardio capacity.
Despite this for most of my school life I was slightly on the chubby side.
I usually had a nice layer of fat down the front of my chest and tummy.

Even when I was super fit.
In a week I would:

• Play water polo on Monday and Wednesday.
• Swimming team practice was on Tuesday and Thursday.
• On the other days I loved surfing, up to 4 hours, twice a day!

Now I wasn't just middling at these sports either. In water polo I was one of the few players to play the whole game, most swap out after 15min. I was the shooter and lead swimmer. At swimming meets I won single events and was in most of the team and relay events. Yet still the fat remained.

When I started technical college:

• Cycling and inline skating was how I got around.

Even after all this exercise I had never seen my abs.

Why was I doing all this cardio and not loosing body fat?

Because I needed a lot of energy and I learnt to eat a ton of carbs to get the energy that I needed for all of this exercise.

You don't even notice that you are doing it, your hand just goes out and grabs higher energy foods.
This is completely automated, your body's systems are wired for survival first and foremost.
When your body fat drops, hormones are released that trigger hunger and food finding activities.
You see the body's systems are very well adapted to keeping you alive.
You have told your body that you want to do all of this running around and it will help you to do it.

This happens to anyone that starts a cardiovascular program.
Naturally they get hungry and eat more.
Unless they are on a Calorie controlled diet.

Counting Calories is too hard right?

So many people end up doing 2 hours of cardio a day to offset their uncontrolled eating habbits.
The body gets even more hungry and signals for more high Calorie dense foods.
As a matter of survival the human body is clearly capable of taking in more energy than it expends.

Maybe at this point you start to deny yourself things that you like.
Because you are not loosing the body fat that you wanted to loose.

Now the thing about any cardio exercise is that the body's adaptation to it is to become MORE efficient.
That is, doing more without using proportionately more energy.

Starting to see how this is a vicious circle?

Then at some point.

• Maybe you reach a milestone of fitness or health and you stop doing all of that cardio.
• Maybe you can't do all that cardio due to time constraints or sickness.
• Or very likely you just get bored and stop.

But now your body is more efficient AND you are eating more.
So you will put on body fat.

The only way to prevent this is to keep doing that cardio right?

Never mind yo-yo dieting.

Many people yo-yo exercise.

So I should just give up trying to loose body fat?

Sure, if you never want to be as happy or healthy as you should be.

YOU can be strong and sexy with less work:

• If you control how you eat to suite your lifestyle.
• If you do exercise that does not constantly take up more and more of your time.

Less than 20min a day thinking about your food and eating food that you like.
Less time exercising and doing something with progressive results.

For example see our Get Strong And Sexy Series.

Image:
Olivier Bareau