this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2024
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me_irl
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Yeah the video talks about that. Compare two people with the same muscle mass, one has a sedentary lifestyle while the other has an active lifestyle. They both burn about the same calories in a day. Many people are only doing cardio training when they train to lose weight. Because they don’t want bigger muscles. Thus they don’t lose any fat anymore after the first few months since their muscles hardly get any bigger.
A really fat person who wants to lose fat in a reasonable amount of time needs to gain serious muscle mass to lose weight without reducing their caloric intake. While if they just adjust their diet they will lose fat much fast.
Cardio alone will allow you to lose weight for sure. If you have a net higher energy expenditure through a day, you will burn more calories and if the diet stays the same you will lose weight.
The argument is just about how you increase that expenditure. Having more muscle mass and just existing will burn more calories and regularly doing cardio will burn more calories.
Will you be more lazy and thus expend less 'base' energy on days that you do cardio? Probably. That just means that you have to do enough cardio to offset that difference.
You know what's even easier than both cardio and gaining muscle though? Not drinking calories, using lean ground beef instead of full fat, replacing some of the carbs in your meals by more veggies, eating fruits instead of sugary snacks, getting more protein in your diet, ... If you're consuming a fuckton of calories a day, there's no amount of muscle that'll allow you to lose weight.
The video is pulling from research which says you won't. Your body wants to hold onto fat badly. Your brain will make behavioural shifts to reduce energy expenditure when you're not doing cardio.
Again no. Your brain will just down shift your energy use more. It's going to win because it's had millions of years evolving to do exactly that.
Which is the exact point of the video. Exercise for other health benefits, diet control for loosing weight.
Anecdotally - I am a person who has not been fat (but have been pregnant). Cardio drops my weight faster than dieting and faster than lifting weights. My kid started sports at a place close to a Jazzercise so I started going while she trained. Couple months later I had to buy new clothes and couldn't figure out why, thought I'd lost 5 lb. Stepped on the scale and no, I'd lost 20 and was technically underweight.
When I got married, husband wanted me to gain some so I lifted and gained some weight.
I think maybe lifting weights is good for your appetite, and cardio is not, but in any event if I ever want to simply drop mass, aerobic dance is the fastest path. It's very possible diet is involved but I didn't control it at all, ate when hungry.