By: Chris Gates

In the quest to lose weight, you’ve probably asked yourself the following question: does lifting weights burn more fat than cardio?

• What form of exercise is going to maximize your fat loss progress?
• Is doing cardio going to be optimal for burning fat?
• Or will lifting weights be the key to you changing your body composition?

In this article, I’ll break it all down for you so that you can set up your own fat loss plan and start making progress!

Let’s start by outlining the role of both cardio and lifting weights for burning fat. Then, we’ll dive into exactly what’s going to be best for you, and what your action plan should look like moving forward.

Let’s go!

The Role of Cardio for Fat Loss

Cardio is often where people turn first to lose weight.

The thought process is, “I need to burn as many calories as possible, and cardio helps me burn calories, so that’s what I’m gonna do.”

And when people run into plateaus, they add more cardio. Because if some is good, more must be better … right?

Wrong.

That’s not the thought process I’d recommend for you.

Yes, cardio is the most time efficient way to burn calories, but cardio isn’t FOR burning calories. Lots of research on this subject has concluded that once you’re regularly exercising, adding more exercise isn’t going to make a dramatic impact to burn fat and lose weight.

So instead, you should do cardio for all of the amazing health benefits that come with cardio. Here are a few:

• Improves heart health
• Lowers blood pressure
• Regulates blood sugar
• Improves muscle function and endurance
• Increases sleep quality
• Improves mood
• Helps to improve stability

Cardio should be part of your workout program regardless of whether you’re trying to burn fat, build muscle, or any other health or fitness goal. So you should definitely include it in your plan, but don’t make it the end-all, be-all for your progress.

Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket like that, because that’s not going to be what’s most effective for you and the progress you’re trying to make.

The Role of Lifting Weights for Fat Loss

Lifting weights is the other form of exercise you can choose, and once again it comes with benefits that will not only help with fat loss, but more importantly will improve your overall health and longevity.

Lifting weights will help you to strengthen your bones and joints, which can’t be understated (especially as you age). That’s going to help you reduce your risk of injury and live a longer, more active life.

Lifting weights and building muscle and strength will also help you to improve your body composition over time. It will help you boost your basal metabolic rate (BMR), which means you’ll naturally burn more calories at rest.

And most importantly for fat loss, lifting weights is going to help you maximize the amount of weight you lose specifically from body fat. Research has found that combining strength training with an effective diet plan can actually maximize the amount of body fat you’ll lose.

Here’s how it works…

When you participate in strength training, it sends a cascade of signals from your brain to the rest of your body. In a nutshell, your brain tells the body that lifting weights was challenging, so muscle needs to be preserved (or built) in order to complete those challenging tasks again.

So by lifting weights, you’ll retain or build muscle in the process of trying to burn body fat and lose weight.

And that’s awesome, because it means you’re going to absolutely love the way you look at the end of the process!

So many people are after that “toned” look. Well, the only way you can look toned is if you’ve got muscle on your frame. Lifting weights will help you accomplish that.

Does Lifting Weights Burn More Fat Than Cardio?

So both cardio and lifting weights are valuable for fat loss…

Which one is better?

Does lifting weights burn more fat than cardio?

Here’s the answer…

NO.

Lifting weights does not burn more fat than cardio. And here’s the kicker…

Cardio doesn’t burn more fat than lifting weights.

Let me explain…

Neither of these forms of exercise inherently burn body fat. In order to burn body fat, you need to be in a calorie deficit.

If you aren’t familiar with what a calorie deficit is, I’ve got tons of information about how to know you’re in a calorie deficit available on my website.

In short, a calorie deficit means you’re in negative energy balance. It means you’re consuming fewer calories from food than you’re burning on a daily basis.

It’s the classic balance of energy in vs. energy out.

So no matter what form of exercise you do, it’s meaningless for fat loss unless you’re in a calorie deficit.

How to Structure Your Diet for Fat Loss

What I recommend you do is start by tracking your nutrition for a week or two, at least. This is a super easy process and will help you get an accurate read on what your diet looks like right now.

From there, you can get a feel for what your average calorie intake is and reduce things slightly. Right around a 10 percent reduction in calories should be a good place to start for most people.

And then take another couple of weeks to continue tracking and see how your body responds.

Your body will respond to being in a calorie deficit in a few ways, and if you keep track of the following body composition metrics you’ll ensure you’re capturing whether or not you’re burning fat:

1. Bodyweight
2. Waist measurement
3. Progress pictures

If you’re documenting each of those on a regular basis, you’ll be capturing just about every single form of progress for fat loss that you can.

If any one of those three body composition metrics are changing/improving, you’re in a calorie deficit and just need to keep going!

That means if your scale weight is dropping, and/or if your waist is shrinking, and/or if you are seeing your body change in your photos, you’re in a calorie deficit.

Doesn’t have to be all three. Just one is enough to confirm that what you’re doing is working.

Because sometimes you’ll burn fat, but you won’t see the scale go down. And that’s no reason to quit. It means you’re building muscle and you’re doing everything right!

And sometimes you’ll get in your own head and convince yourself you’re not making progress when you actually are, and seeing it in your progress pictures will keep you on track.

Put in a little bit of extra effort, focus on these details, and it will make your journey a success!

How to Structure Your Training for Fat Loss

In addition to being in a calorie deficit, you should do some combination of lifting weights and cardio.

And really, you can structure this however you’d like.

If you love lifting weights, you can do a little bit more of that. If you love cardio, you can do more cardio than lifting.

But make sure you’re doing at least a little bit of both. And the reason why is for the reasons we’ve already discussed…

You’re going to get incredible overall health benefits from doing both cardio and lifting weights. And the more you improve your overall health, you’ll be putting yourself in the best possible situation to wake up every day and attack your goal of burning fat.

Here are a few recommendations as you build your own training plan:

• Lift weights at least twice a week, and focus on compound exercises like rowing, pressing, and squatting.
• Do cardio at least twice a week, and focus on doing whatever form of cardio you enjoy the most.
• Take 2-3 rest days a week to allow your body to recover.

Focus on the ways these forms of exercise build you up — not break you down.

And let the adjustments you made to your diet do the magic!

I hope this helps!

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Thank you so much for reading! This is a topic that has a lot of misinformation out there in the fitness industry. There are claims across the board about “magical” forms of cardio that will melt fat away, and different strength training exercises that will “tone” your body and give you the look you’ve always wanted.

At the end of the day, none of that stuff is true. It always comes back to the basics, and I hope I was able to spell those out simple enough in this article 🙂

If you’re interested in getting personalized coaching to help you burn fat, and create a training and nutrition plan to maximize your progress, please check out my coaching page! You can fill out a coaching application form if you’d like to get together and talk about your goals.

Have a great day!