Cardio or strength for weight loss

I will just come out of the gate and say that as a health professional, I don’t support pitching Cardio or Strength for weight loss against each other. You need both for health and both cardio and strength contributes with important benefits for weight loss.

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Pitching cardio vs strength for weight loss is old school by today’s standard! But yes, it does still happen.

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Putting them up against each other gives the notation there is only one option if weight loss is a goal for you. Or that you can do other things but they are not as effective. So that contributes to the somewhat extreme attitude but not uncommon, that if I want to reach my goal I just do what is best and what I actually like has to take a back seat.

As you know know, you need both strength and cardio. If reaching your goals was inevitable but you could do it in two ways. 1st where it feels effortless and rewarding to be healthy and lose weight. 2nd It requires hard work en discipline. You can choose how you want to feel reaching your goals and you adjust and choose activities thereafter.

What does strength training do for you?

In short, these are some benefits

• With more muscle mass you can store glycogen better / more
• Helps with type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance.
• A building block to a strong and resilient body
• Burns more calories at rest than cardio
• Increase muscle mass
• Improves bone health
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What will cardio do for you?

Here you have some benefits from cardio

• Helps with type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance
• Burns more calories during cardio then strength.
• Increased cardiovascular health and fitness
• Utilises stored glycogen (glucose) as fuel
• Positive impact on heart health
• Can improve memory
• Increase bone health

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Phew, now when I have gotten that of my chest I wonder what do you prefer? If there is no right or wrong what are you more drawn to? or are you team both?

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