As a vehicle owner, you want to burn as little fuel as possible.
A Prius is more fuel efficient than a muscle car.
However, as a human who wants to look good and burn fat you want to burn fuel at a higher rate.
Sticking with the car example it’s better to be the muscle car than the Prius.
The engine that burns the fuel in our body is muscle.
A Prius body type can jump on a treadmill and run for days or do cardio for hours BECAUSE they’re efficient at burning fat and conserving energy.
This is NOT what we want if we want to drop body fat and look good.
We want to be inefficient at burning fat and conserving energy so that we are constantly burning fat stores.
Thus, rating workouts based on calorie burn is a fallacy for fat loss purposes.
Instead, focus on building muscle (unless you love doing cardio for hours on end).
You will likely burn more calories in an hour of moderate running than you will in an hour of resistance training.
However, you’re building lean muscle with resistance training and by doing so increasing the size of your engine.
Increasing the size of your engine increases the need for fuel even while you’re not exercising.
Thus, long-term fuel burn is higher with resistance training than it is with cardio training with less time spent exercising.
The foundation of every fitness and weight loss program needs to be resistance training.
Stop counting calories and start building muscle.
Stop trying to run your weight off and instead take a hard look at your nutrition.
Brett “Muscle Power” Denton