Should you lift weights in a gym or pursue cardio or aerobic exercises like cycling or running to lose weight and improve fitness? This debate between lifting weights and cardio has festered for a long time and often leaves individuals who are looking to lead active and health life, in confusion.
The perennial debate between cardio and lifting weights is so deep that often the long distance marathoners and lovers of weight training do not see eye to eye.
The fear of putting on more muscle, which could slow them down while running, drives marathoners away from stepping into a gym. On the other hand, persons who enjoy lifting weights and build muscle are never seen on a track or a field, as they fear that taking-up heavy cardio could lead to muscle loss.
As a result of this debate, quite often, ordinary people who are simply interested in losing a few ‘kgs’ and do not aim to become a marathoner or a body builder, do not get the best advice. Quite often, such individuals tend to give-up on aerobic exercises like cycling, swimming, brisk walking etc or lifting weights because they do not get the desired results.
Impact of lifting weights on body metabolism
There is no denying that if individuals manage to lift weights consistently for long time and at the same time maintain a calorie deficit diet and add more sources of protein in diet, they will develop muscles, which in turn can ignite the dormant or slow body metabolism.
A majority of Indians do tend to struggle with body fat, as their body is quite sluggish in converting food into energy. Sometimes, the food consumed often gets converted into fat and gets deposited in the abdominal region, leading to multiple complications including cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, diabetes etc.
Essentially, metabolism is the ability of the body to turn food that is consumed into energy. There are many factors that influence metabolism in an individual including their genes, diet, sleep, lifestyle and exercise habits.
When individuals through weight training build lean muscles, then the body starts burning calories quickly and this increases the body metabolism. In layman’s terms, when the body has more muscle, then it starts burning calories efficiently.
Benefits of cardio
Cardio or aerobic activity is the body movement that raises the heart rate and keeps it elevated till the duration of the physical activity. Cardio can be of any form including a brisk walk, cycling, swimming, a session of pilates, zumba, running etc.
Broadly, cardio or aerobic exercise can be divided into steady state cardio and high intensity interval training. The steady state cardio involves maintaining the heart rate at a steady rate for long durations by pursing cycling, jogging, walking, brisk walking etc. The high intensity interval training (also known as HIIT) involves taking the heart rate to maximum and then allowing it to become steady by taking rest for a short duration.
So should you pursue cardio or lift weights?
Emerging evidence from a clutch of different studies from Europe, Canada and United States, have suggested that combining both aerobic and muscle-strengthening physical activity provides superior and more complete health benefits than pursing either activity alone.