You've heard it plenty: Cardio exercise enhances fitness and helps you lose weight. You've no doubt also heard that weightlifting, too, improves fitness and helps with weight loss. Whether you're limited in time or simply want to find the most efficient way to burn calories, it is useful to understand the weight-loss and other benefits of weightlifting and cardio exercise.
Breathing Heavily Is Good For Your Waistline
Of all the exercises and activities you can do to assist with your weight loss, cardio exercise burns the greatest number of calories. Cardio exercise, also referred to as aerobic exercise, raises your heart rate and causes you to breathe deeply. As you burn calories, you need to generate more energy. The metabolism process, the breakdown of glucose or other energy stores to produce energy for exertion, requires oxygen, which is why you breathe heavily. Your heart pumps faster because your blood, which gets oxygenated in your lungs, has to deliver that oxygen to your cells. So when you find yourself breathing heavily while you exercise, you know you are burning calories.
Calories Burned in Cardio
How many calories you burn doing cardio exercise depends on various factors, including how much you weigh, how long you exercise and how intensely you exercise. To achieve the greatest calorie-burning benefits, you should engage in moderately intense cardio exercise for at least 30 minutes, most days of the week, according to MayoClinic.com. A person who weighs 175 lbs. and walks briskly --- about 3 mph --- for 60 minutes burns about 276 calories, estimates Bodybuilding.com. Walking very briskly, about 4.5 mph, that person burns 526 calories, and he burns 666 calories running or jogging at 5 mph for 60 minutes. You lose 1 lb. for every 3,500 calories you burn, so burning 666 calories per day running, it would take about five days for the calories burned in a daily one-hour jog to yield 1 lb. of weight loss.
Calories Burned Weight Training
Just like cardio exercise, the number of calories you burn doing weight lifting --- using free weights, nautilus or universal-type power lifting --- depends on various factors including your weight, how long you work out and how intensely you work out. The 175-lb. person who does a 60-minute workout burns about 250 calories doing a light workout, expending modest effort, and burns about 500 calories doing a vigorous workout. Doing a vigorous workout, it would take about seven days to lose a pound, as opposed to the five days it would take running.
Other Benefits
Both weightlifting and cardio provide other benefits besides burning calories. Cardio exercise enhances your immune system, improves your stamina, boosts your mood and lowers your risk for various health conditions, including stroke, heart disease, high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, diabetes and certain types of cancer, reports MayoClinic.com. Weightlifting increases your lean muscle mass, which heightens your metabolism, burning a few extra calories every day, even when you are sedentary.
Optimal Program
Cardio and weightlifting both burn calories, but offer somewhat different benefits. If you have the time, energy and commitment, diversify your benefits by incorporating cardio and weight training into your exercise regimen. And to really effectively lose weight, you must carefully manage your diet and caloric intake because neither weight lifting nor cardio can compensate for poor choices at the table.
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