To Cardio, or Not To Cardio… That is the question!

As with much of the rest of the health and fitness world, many fallacies exist around cardio.  I will do my best in this brief article to dispel some of those fallacies, and discuss some of the considerations for how much and what type of cardio you should be doing. 

So what are some of the fallacies that exist???  When I think of cardio fallacies I think of things like:

• More cardio will make me skinnier
• We need to do cardio to “burn” calories
• We need to do cardio to be in great shape
• Cardio makes us healthy
• The more cardio the better

Do you have any of these ideas about cardio?  If so, keep reading and see if I can convince you otherwise.

Will cardio make you skinny??? (A better question may be do you even want to be skinny, but we’ll save that for another day.)  Well, my answer would be a resounding no!  Follow me here for a second… Do you have friends who are runners?  If so, how many of them are skinny?  How many of them are skinny fat (fairly small but soft and flabby), or maybe chubby?  Have you ever sat by a jogging path and looked at the people running by?  How many of them are skinny?  How many are skinny fat, or chubby?  Skinny people tend to gravitate towards running, the same way tall people gravitate towards basketball, but running will not make you skinny anymore than basketball will make you tall.  I know runners, and often watch people run on the waterfront in PDX, and what I see is much more skinny fat people and chubby people, then skinny people.  I know this is anecdotal, but there’s more to come on why cardio doesn’t make you skinny.

The idea that you need to “burn” calories to lose weight, is overly simplistic and mostly just useful for marketing gym memberships, fitness classes, and fitness DVD’s.  Guru’s argue back and forth about whether or not the key to weight loss is as simple as take in less than you burn, but even if it is that simple, doing high intensity cardio to burn calories doesn’t make sense.  Here’s why it doesn’t make sense…  When you jump on the elliptical and go hard for 30 minutes, racking up 350 calories burned (as the machine tells you), you did some work!  You leave tired, but you’re satisfied that you burned 350 calories.  The problem is that even if the machine calculated your “burn” correctly (they often over estimate), you still likely did less for your calorie burn than if you would have spent 30 minutes lifting weights.  You see, 30 minutes of weight lifting may only burn 150 or 200 calories, but the increase in your metabolism following that weightlifting session (EPOC-  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_post-exercise_oxygen_consumption) can last as long as 38 hours after the session!  Additionally, building more muscle means that your resting metabolic rate is increased every day you have that muscle.  So, any way you slice it, you will likely “burn” more calories with weightlifting than you would with cardio.

Do you need to do cardio to be in great “shape”???  Well, I guess that depends on how you define cardio…  The approach I recommend for most people includes lots of low-level cardio (read: walking), and lots of strength training.  I would argue that most people can get in just as good of shape with this approach as someone who’s running regularly (or doing other mainstream forms of intense cardio).  They will not perform as well on extended efforts (30-minutes or more), and they won’t be as proficient at running (or Zumba or Spin) as someone who’s doing those things regularly.  They will however perform nearly as well on a VO2Max test (the gold standard for cardiovascular performance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VO2_max), and they will avoid the overuse injuries and metabolic damage that can come from large amounts of intense cardio (more on that in a future blog).  They will also likely be much stronger than the runner, and strength trumps all! 

The idea that you need tons of cardio to be healthy is just ludicrous to me!  So much so, that I don’t even want to address it, but I will.  Here’s my first piece of evidence that large amounts of cardio does not make you healthier than other exercise:

  

Which one of these two people look healthier to you???  To me, one looks like a POW, and the other looks like the peak of health!  The adaptations that occur in your body when you are doing large amounts of cardio are very similar to those that happen as you die.  Does muscle wasting and storing fat inside muscle sound like health to you?  Clearly cardio doesn’t MAKE us healthy!

I’ve already touched around the fallacy of “the more cardio the better” above, but I’ll briefly touch on it again.  I don’t like that society has this “everything in moderation” mentality because I think that’s total BS, but that said, I think it’s clear that moderation is better in a lot of things.  More cardio is not better, unless you’re training for an endurance event.  More cardio will not necessarily help you lose fat faster, it won’t necessarily make you healthier, and it won’t necessarily improve your fitness.  We’ve covered this enough right???

So, who should do cardio, what kind of cardio should they do, and why?  As I said before I think everyone should be strength training and doing lots of walking.  These things will help everyone be healthier, and leaner, and more fit.  Beyond that, the question gets more complicated… 

Are you metabolically broken (read: obese), or suffering from adrenal fatigue, hormone issues, or thyroid dysfunction?  If any of those apply to you, then you are best to not do any more exercise than what’s listed above.  If you fit into any of those categories, you need to clean up your diet, sleep, lift some weights, and walk, AND THAT’S ALL!  Once your metabolic/hormonal/adrenal/thyroid issues are improved, you can begin adding in some higher intensity work.

If you’re metabolically healthy, then adding in some higher intensity work can be a great thing for you.  If want to train for an endurance event, go for it, but still do the strength training and walking.  If you just want to be healthy, or you want to lose some fat, adding in some high intensity interval work once or twice a week might be great for you.  Studies show that high intensity work can be great for metabolism, VO2Max, and other indicators of health and fitness, so if you’re not metabolically broken this could be a good thing to add into your routine.

I hope I’ve proved my point to you that more cardio isn’t better, and not everyone needs any more cardio than just daily walking.  Did this article clear things up for you, or just make you more confused?  What questions do you have about application of cardio?

Sleep more, exercise less!

I wanted to take a little bit of time to write about the topic of stress management, as I feel this is a topic that is often misunderstood by most people.  It’s also one of the most important factors in your ability to attain your health and fitness goals!  Without good stress management, you will never be able to be as healthy as you can be!

Let’s think of our body’s internal stress management systems like a bank account.  We make deposits and withdrawals, but the higher we keep the balance the healthier we’ll be.  So what are the things we do to make withdrawals from our account?  Withdrawals come in many forms including:

• Emotional stress
• Sleep deprivation (less than 7 hours in a night)
• Exercise (varies based on intensity and duration)
• Caloric restriction
• Caffeine use
• Alcohol use

How many of these things apply to you?  A bunch of them right???  If so, what are you doing to manage this stress?  Some of the things we can do to make deposits to the account include:

• Meditation
• Sleep (8+ hours per night)
• Walk (at a leisurely pace)
• Exercise appropriately
• Eat enough food
• Use less caffeine

The next thing I’m going to say might surprise you, but the truth is you may need to exercise less to attain your health and fitness goals.  If we think about all of these factors affecting the same bank account, we have to consider them as a whole.  That means if you’re extra stressed at work, and you’re sleeping less than 7 hours per night, you should only be exercising a couple days per week and it should be moderate intensity.  I make my money off of people exercising, but I’m telling you to sleep more and exercise less.  The more withdrawals you’re making, the more deposits you need to keep your account in the positive.  Jim Laird

http://athlete.io/4479/your-new-lifestyle-relax-your-way-to-high-performance/

always talks about earning the right to train.  To me that means you’ve made enough deposits, to make a withdrawal.  If you haven’t made the deposits to cover the withdrawal, then you don’t get to workout (or you need to ratchet the intensity down appropriately).

If we think about this concept from an evolutionary perspective, this totally makes sense.  Our caveman predecessors didn’t have to deal with 45 minute commutes in metro traffic, bills, or bosses that drive them nuts.  On top of that, they mostly laid around all day, with only punctuated bouts of work.  In fact, anthropologists tell us caveman only worked around 15-20 hours a week.  This is the environment our genes are designed to operate in.

We also can see this plaid out with the professional athletes today.  If you look at most top level athlete’s they workout hard, but they also rest hard.  The joke around gyms has always been that a professional bodybuilder’s day looks something like:

• 9:00am: Wake up and eat massive breakfast
• 11:00am: Workout
• 1:00pm: Eat a massive lunch
• 1:30pm: Nap
• 4:30pm: Wake up and eat a snack
• 7:00pm: Eat a massive dinner
• 10:00pm: Eat desert
• 11:00pm: Bed time

Somebody who’s doing this is surely earning the right to train.  Now, I understand that most of us don’t have the luxury of living like this, but we still need to earn the right to train.  If you have a week where your sleep sucks, and you’re stressed at work, consider taking a week off from the gym and just walking.  If you’re going through a period of extra stress in your life, do all you can to tighten down your diet and get extra sleep.  Keep your account in the positive, and you will see better results in all aspects of health and fitness.

Eat Some Damn Broccoli!

The other day my co-worker asked me if I knew anything about Forskohlii Root extract.  He said he had heard something about it being a great supplement for fat-loss.  Before I could even respond to the question about my knowledge of this root, I just blurted out “you don’t need a supplement, you need some damn broccoli!”  That was likely a little abrasive, and wasn’t what my co-worker wanted to hear, but it was probably the most truth I shared the entire conversation.

I don’t really know anything about that root extract, but what I do know is that there truly is no supplement (pun intended) for eating lots of lean meats and veggies.  You can try all the fat burning pills, or metabolic enhancing extracts, or weight loss shakes you want, but the fact is that none of them will work as good as a clean diet based in meat and veggies!

I get that we all want convenience, but really eating meat and veggies is relatively convenient!  Nutrisystem and Jenny Craig and the like made a killing selling a system of counting points, which was more convenient for people than counting calories.  I’m suggesting however that you don’t need to count anything, just eat meat and veggies!  Granted, when you’re trying to get to bodyfat percentages under 12%, you probably will need to start counting again, but if you have significant amounts of fat to lose you don’t need to count anything.

So, to reiterate, the KISS (keep it simple stupid) method of eating for fat-loss is as easy as eating some damn broccoli!  There’s really no secret, no pill, no shake…  If the majority of your calories don’t come from lean meats and veggies, then that is the most likely culprit for your extra bodyfat.  If you want to lose that bodyfat (and get healthier than you’ve likely ever been), make sure that the vast majority of your daily intake comes from lean meats and veggies.  It’s really that easy folks…

The Journey to Health

I just wanted to talk briefly about the journey to health and wellness. First, I want to remind you that the journey is not a race, and certainly not a sprint, and should not be treated as such. The journey is different for everyone, and often needs to include baby steps. If your sleep, diet, exercise, and stress-management are all out of whack, try addressing those issues one at a time. Making SOME positive change that you can follow through with, and stick to, is much better than making a BUNCH of positive changes that you can't sustain. Pick one of those 4 areas, and try to make some positive change. Once that change has become a part of your daily life, pick something else to work on. Before you know it, you just might have all 4 areas cleaned up and healthy living will be a part of your daily life.

The other thing to keep in mind here is that we all have successes and failures, and those failures need not come with guilt. Say you find yourself at work without lunch, and you end up taking the path of least resistance and getting lunch from the Burger King across the street. Once you've ate that meal, you could take a couple of paths with the rest of your day. Path 1 is that you recognize your slip up, and decide to get back on the wagon with the next bite that goes in your mouth. Path 2 is that you spend the entire afternoon feeling guilty about your slip up, and when it comes time for dinner you don't make a healthy choice because you've already "ruined" the day. In the second scenario not only did one bad meal turn into two (or more?), but you also caused potentially significant stress on you body by beating yourself up all afternoon. That added stress causes you to store more fat, so the poor meal choices you made are just compounded.

All of this is to say that the path to health and wellness is a journey, and it's your journey! Make the biggest change you can sustain, and avoid biting off more than you can handle. When you slip up (you will, we ALL do!), remember that you're human and change is hard, then try to make your next choice a positive one. Maybe most importantly, don't beat yourself up when you make a mistake. It most definitely sounds cliche, but health is a journey not a destination, and journey's begin with one step.

What one step are you taking today on your health journey?