It's True! Cardio Could Be Making You Fat!

A variety of new studies are showing that cardio can not only sabotage your weightloss goals, but can hinder your body from burning fat!

According to The Denver Post,  if you WANT to gain weight, then a treadmill is where you should turn! 

What? How? But, why? 

In the article, it explains: "When you spend 30, 40 or even 60 minutes pounding away on a treadmill, you send your body a powerful signal to start storing fat instead of burning it.

This is because when you do cardio, your body reacts to the stress by suppressing a very important hormone that is produced by the thyroid to burn fat. When this hormone, called T3, is suppressed, your body starts gaining and storing fat immediately."

So basically, your body gets used to what its doing and, therefore, it adjusts itself to become more efficient at doing it. This means that your body burns less amount of calories because it does not need to work as hard. The difference between plain, ole cardio and H.I.I.T is that the high intensity interval training shakes things up by keeping your body guessing! In turn, your body has to readjust and burn more calories.

It's true that you do not need large amounts of cardio! Doing too much cardio can put a lot of stress onto your body. And we all know that stress causes the release of Cortisol aka the "stress hormone." Chronically high levels of this hormone can cause stubborn belly fat, weight gain, blood sugar abnormalities, and poor sleeping habits. Cardio also makes you hungry! Ever notice how hungry you get after a 30 minute treadmill session? Dubbed the worst con of cardio of all, it has been said that cardio also eats away at your calorie burning muscle after about 30 minutes or so. Great!

So, what cardio should  I be doing?

H.I.I.T. exercises, jumping rope, and sprints are some of the best forms of cardio that you can do. It keeps your body guessing and hard at work. But don't put so much emphasis on doing so much cardio, though, as weight training has been shown to burn more fat, long into the hours of the day.

Short and sweet: If you want to burn fat to lose weight, then stick to lifting weights & high intensity interval training and stay away from the long, boring jogs and treadmill runs.