Cardio Can Help You Lose Fat. We often hear that cardio can make you store fat and it can make you burn muscle. It’s almost like cardio is something to be afraid of. But I want to help you understand how high intensity interval training and steady state cardio can be part of your normal workout schedule.
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First, cardio is good for your heart, lungs and brain. Getting your heart rate up and blood flowing is good for your cardiovascular system. It gets blood flowing in your body and happy chemicals like serotonin flowing in our brain. It’s good for our lung capacity, it’s good for our digestive system and it is good for fat loss.
After a HIIT workout your testosterone levels will be boosted, which is great to have your cortisol and your testosterone elevated at the same time. This helps you burn fat. You can learn more about that here.
By doing some high intensity interval training workouts, perhaps 2 – 4 a week, depending on your body’s ability to recover as well as your goals, you can get all of the benefits of cardio and not be very likely to increase your cortisol in an unhealthy way, causing fat storage or muscle loss.
It takes a lot of cardio over an extended amount of time to make you lose muscle. If your goal is to build a perkier booty, training for a marathon is not going to get you there, but going on a run on Saturdays and doing spin on Thursdays isn’t likely to make you lose muscle.
You can even do some low or moderate intensity cardio too. Again, it has the same benefits at HIIT workouts with the blood flow, the heart and lung health, serotonin, etc, it just takes a little bit longer which is hard with a busy lifestyle.
Do you need help figuring out how much cardio you need?
Go to Commit2FitCoaching.com/freeassessment and let me help you.
Your Coach,
Kyra
P.S. Everyone is different. Some people need different amounts of cardio in their daily workout plan to help them reach their goals. It’s all individualized which is why I run #Commit2Fit with personalized workout plans. Everything should be custom and designed specifically for YOU.