Cardio & Calories
For years of my life I felt like every cardio workout I did had to be at max capacity. I was putting time into exercise, so I might as well get the most out of it and burn the most calories by pushing myself to my limit, right?
There are two flaws with this rationale.
1️⃣. Pushing yourself to your limit occasionally can be incredibly gratifying. It’s great to know what your body is capable of and feel accomplished by how hard you worked. However, I think we forget how much of a mental toll this kind of push takes. You may enjoy the dopamine rush after your big workout, but odds are that you’re creating a mental hurdle that keeps getting bigger the more advanced you get. I know from experience that the desire to keep pushing and improve tends to start off as a motivator and become a roadblock.
If the expectation for every workout is to be better than last time, it can be challenging to keep getting started. The bar becomes so high and there are going to be days that we just don’t have it in us to “be better than yesterday” as all of the fitness clothing brands tend to preach.
Exercise needs variance to be most effective. There are going to be days where we push to our limits, but there need to be moderate effort days as well. Balance is the key to sustainable results, not acute intensity.
2️⃣. Society has given us this false perception that cardio is a good way for us to burn calories. When we have a big weekend of eating or drinking, who hasn’t said that they needed to jog on the treadmill to burn it off?
The reality is that your 45 minutes of jogging on the treadmill is probably the equivalence of two Snickers bars. It’s just not that efficient a way of burning calories.
“It’s just not that efficient a way of burning calories.”
Alternatively, 45 minutes of walking on the treadmill is about the equivalence of burning off one Snickers bar. Yes, you burned more calories jogging, but in the grand scheme of things, you still didn’t burn that many calories.
I bring this up because trying to reconcile the food we eat with the volume of our exercise tends to be a bad idea because it can lead to disordered eating and exercise.
Additionally, because we’re not burning many calories whether we do low or high intensity exercise, I don’t care what kind of cardio you do. I just want you to enjoy it.
I can’t tell you how many Pridefit members will choose running as their form of cardio even though they hate it. They think that because it’s more of a calorie burn, it’s going to get them results faster, but their dislike leads to resentment, and resentment leads to quitting.
Cardiovascular disease is the #1 killer of Americans. We absolutely 100% need to be doing cardio to improve our heart and lung health. However, I don’t care how many calories your cardio burns.
You read that right.
I don’t need you to choose the cardio that burns the most calories. I need you to choose the cardio that you enjoy because that’s the only cardio that you’ll be able to stick with long term.
“choose the cardio that you enjoy”
Jogging, walking, rowing, biking, sports - they’re all great forms of cardio. You have to decide for yourself what is most enjoyable in order to truly make cardio sustainable.
It’s going to take a lot of effort to undo the years of calorie mania that was impressed upon, so I want you to say it with me:
“I’m going to pick cardio I enjoy. Not cardio that feels like it’s going to burn the most calories.”
If you can combine low and high intensity days with cardio that you actually enjoy, you’ve found the magic formula. You got this.
