How much cardio do you need to do to lose weight?
I often see my clients come into my gym and get on the treadmill and stay on for more than an hour sweating profusely by the time they get off. What they may not know is that they do not need to be doing cardio for an hour at a time to lose weight. So how much cardio does someone need to get fit and lose weight?
Well it’s actually a simple equation: it takes 3400 calories to burn up one pound of fat. So that means if you do cardio for 30 minutes at a time, 4 days a week (roughly burning up 400 calories each time), then that is 1600 calories or half way to losing a pound of fat. There are several other factors that come into play in determining how much cardio you might need to do including:
- Your daily activity level- are you sedentary most of your day or are you up and moving around a lot of the time?
- Your diet- Are you cutting back on calories and portion sizes to drop weight?
- How much muscle do you have? Are you lifting weights regularly which also burns up a great number of calories? Having more muscle tone on your body will increase your metabolism so that you are burning up more calories all day and night
All of this might sound a bit confusing or overwhelming at first. It is for this reason that with my clients who sign up for personal training in my facility, we also provide them with what to eat, how much to eat of it, and how much cardio to perform and with their weight lifting workouts.
For more information feel free to contact me at (925) 699-7063 or email me at don [at] donslifestyle [dot] com
