Cardio is a staple in the majority of fat loss programmes these days. Sure, it's useful, but how useful exactly?
A quick recap on the basics: energy deficit = weight lost, energy surplus = weight gained. The main driver of fat loss is the energy deficit, which can easily be achieved through nutrition. Once that deficit is in place, additional cardio just helps to create a slightly larger deficit. So, by that rationale, cardio isn't necessary for fat loss. But is it necessary if you want to speed things up? Well, the gut instinct would be to say yes. However, there are certain times when that may not create the outcome that we want. Let's break it down a little more.
Towards the end of a longer fat loss phase, fatigue will be climbing. Dieting is stressful after all. What typically happens is that though your activity levels through your weight training stay the same, cardio often increases. But alongside that increase in cardio output, we see a reduction in NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis). NEAT if you didn't remember is all the physical activity you do daily outside of actual training, so things like walking around, fidgeting, even blinking. This is important because NEAT is kind of a big deal. Even bigger than weight training and cardio when it comes to how much it affects the energy our body burns. Take a look at this chart below to get an idea.
You can see quite clearly that the section for NEAT is twice as big as that for Exercise. The reason this NEAT reduction happens during hard diets is that our bodies are trying to conserve energy. Here's an example to illustrate this in real life. When you're not restricting calories and you're not feeling more fatigued from training than normal when you drive to the supermarket parking lot you don't mind parking the car far away from the entrance. This may not even be a conscious decision, you just instinctively park the car further away and don't think twice about it. When you're a few months into a fat loss phase, fatigue has risen and alongside that stress, when you pull into that parking lot you're going to drive around a few times to find a parking spot that's as close to those doors as possible. Again, not even necessarily because you're conscious of a desire to conserve energy, your body does that for you.
So, how can we combat this? Well, the solution is pretty simple. We change what we're doing for cardio and instead prioritise NEAT. By NEAT I just mean going for a walk, either on a treadmill or outside. The benefit of this is that it's a lot easier to recover from walking than multiple 45-minute cardio sessions where the heart rate is kept above 130 beats per minute, especially during periods of reduced calories and intense training. It seems counter-intuitive that substituting say 180 minutes of cardio each week for a daily walk each day can yield better results at times. But if you look back on the chart, you'll remember that NEAT counts for more than double the energy output compared to Exercise.
This isn't to say that cardio is pointless or has no utility during a fat-loss phase. Far from it. As long as it fits into a programme in a way that allows proper recovery without hampering training performance then it's perfectly fine. It's also a performance enhancer, because as comfortable as walking is, for most people, it's not going to be enough to improve their cardiovascular stamina to a noticeable degree, especially if they have reasons why they want to have a decent gas tank on them. But it may be overrated as a fat loss tool.
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