Everyone knows the best way to burn calories and lose weight is to do lots of cardio right! Well yes you can burn lots of calories and lose weight doing lots of cardio but is it the best way to go about this?

To lose weight you need to be burning more calories than you are eating and put yourself in what is called a calorie deficit. For instance if you are able to burn 500 calories per day more than your body requires than over a week you will lose 1 pound of body weight, and usually most of it will be fat.

Some people have a lot of weight to lose or are needing to get really ow in body fat for an event and so a much higher calorie deficit may be required, as much as 1000 to 2000 per day. To do this requires managing your food very closely along with a high level of activity to burn calories.

Generally speaking cardio is a very effective way to burn a lot of calories in a short amount of time as cardio requires some sort of more intensive activity that get your heart rate up fairly high for a sustained period of time. For sure this works to help you get into a more extreme calorie deficit but it cam come at a cost which is the loss of both muscle and fat, not just fat.

In this YouTube video I talk about why too much cardio can have a negative effect in what type of body weight you end up losing. I also offer some suggestions on how you can achieve a more aggressive calorie deficit to lose body weight while keeping your muscle and targeting your fat for the weight loss.