I see it everyday.. As I walk through the gym and glance into the cardio room, I see the swarm of cardio bunnies sweating their buns off. And I wonder to myself, “Are they doing that because they enjoy it? Or are they doing it because they feel they HAVE to in order to look better?” Now, I know there a lot of people out there that enjoy running and enjoy doing lots of cardio, but if you are anything like myself, you DEFINITELY do not.
So what’s the deal with cardio? Do we HAVE to do it to get into great shape? Or are we just putting ourselves through torture for nothing?
You guessed it… Another blog post from Chaz telling you to break the trend. “Eat the foods you want.” “Track your macros.” “Don’t do cardio.” Blah, blah, blah…
Well, that picture you see on the left:
That’s me about two and half years ago. I was in the gym everyday, I tried to eat only “healthy” foods, I ran around two miles repeatedly a few times a week thinking it was what I had to do in order to lose weight and get that “toned” or “ripped” look.
The picture on the right:
My current physique. I eat the foods that I want each day, I loosely track my calorie intake consistently, and have done pretty much next to no cardio.
…………… Drop the mic and walk away.
How did I do it? When trying to lose weight, the most important aspect is calorie intake and calorie expenditure. If your body expends 2500 calories each day from your regular activities that you do day in and day out, then you should only be taking in around 2000 calories each day in order to lose weight each week.
The annoying part: after awhile the body will adapt to this amount of calories that are being taken in, and stop losing weight and stall out. Also known as a plateau. At this point in time, you have two choices to choose from to keep progressing.
-  Drop your calorie intake by eating less to send you into a deeper calorie deficit to kick start the weight loss affect again.
- Keep eating the same amount of food and add in a few sessions of monitored cardio a week to burn more calories and send your body into a deeper calorie deficit.
