Does Cardio Help You Lose Weight?

There are 3,500 calories in a single pound of fat, and to lose weight you need to create a caloric deficit; burning calories through exercise contributes to this. Cardio exercise, or aerobic exercise, maximizes the amount of oxygen in your bloodstream by causing you to breathe faster and more deeply as your heart rate rises. Walking, running, swimming, biking and dancing are all forms of cardio exercise to help you burn calories, resulting in weight loss.

Benefits

Cardio exercise helps you to burn calories to lose weight but also decreases your risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke while increasing high-density lipoprotein, or HDL, the good cholesterol, raise your circulatory health, and lower blood pressure and fats.

Types

Two types of cardio workouts are low-intensity and high-intensity workouts. Low-intensity cardio is done for an hour or more, at 60 to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate. The energy demand of your body to breathe and pump blood from the heart is what burns calories; the more of a demand the more calories burned, more calories burned more weight lost. Determine your maximum heart rate by subtracting your age from 220, this is the beats per minute of an infant. This is known as your "fat-burning zone."

High-intensity interval training, HIIT, burns a high number of calories in a short amount of time while increasing your metabolism. HIIT involves switching back and forth form a short burst of high energy to a period of recovery. An example of this would be to sprint for one minute then walk or jog for two minutes, doing this six to 10 times in a session.

Running is one of the most muscle-demanding cardio exercises, resulting in more calories burned. Other forms of cardio that involve assistance from equipment, like an elliptical machine, have a lower demand on the body. Running for an hour at a 12-minute-mile pace burns around 450 to 650 calories in an hour, while the elliptical machine would burn between 400 and 550 calories in an hour. Calories burned during a cardio session also depend on how much you weigh--the more you weigh the more calories you burn because of the effort to move the extra weight. Running a 12-minute-mile pace for an hour would burn about 470 calories for a 130 lb. person and about 650 calories for a 165 lb. person.

Guidelines

Adults need between 75 minutes of vigorous exercise to 150 minutes of moderate exercise, or a combination of both, each week, notes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To increase your weight loss, aim for 300 minutes of moderate exercise each week or 150 minutes of vigorous exercise.

Considerations

Take into consideration your fitness level before attempting any vigorous exercise. Your fitness level has an effect on calories burned during a cardio session. If you are in the "fit" range you will challenge yourself more during exercises, resulting in a higher heart rate, burning more calories. If you are new to exercise, start off slowly with low-intensity workouts instead of diving into high-intensity training. An aerobic fitness test is to check you pulse, counting the beats for 10 seconds, multiply that by 6 to reach your beats per minute, then walk a mile at a fast pace, then measure your beats per minute again. You can use a heart rate chart according to your sex to determine your fitness level. Also record how long it took to complete the mile and keep track of your progress to determine your improved fitness level.

Warning

Before starting any new diet or workout program, consult your doctor. A healthy weight loss is 1 to 2 lbs. per week, so don't overdo cardio in the hopes of losing weight faster. Also, have proper workout gear. Replace sneakers every six months if you use them regularly.