Copyright © 2007 Jonathan Perez

Ask just about anyone what is the best way to lose weight or burn body fat, and 99% will answer "Cardio!".

Well, I hate to bust your bubble, but I'm here to tell you that cardio is downright worthless for weight loss.

That's right, all these years you've been led to believe one of the biggest misconceptions in regards to an efficient weight loss workout plan.

Everyone seems to think that cardio / aerobics is the best way to quickly melt off fat from the body, and as a result, some even neglect or give cardio the preference over weight training.

All you have to do is go to the gym.

Guaranteed that you'll see more people filling up the cardio machines and stepping classes than the hardcore weight equipment.

Take a good look at the aerobics instructors themselves.

Most of them are straight up overweight.  No definition whatsoever to be found.

Yet, they step and dance away for sometimes hours a day, but there's not an ab in site!

Why is this?

First, when I say that cardio is worthless, I'm referring to not being efficient for burning / losing body fat.

I'm not referring to strengthening the cardiovascular system or increasing endurance.

But keep in mind that there is a big difference between building endurance and burning fat.

Again, that's why you see these overweight aerobics instructors that can probably do well in a triathlon (because of excellent endurance), but don't lose any fat weight.

And even when it does come down to training to building cardiovascular endurance cardio still isn't as good as intense weight training, which I go into detail in several articles I wrote on this subject at www.FatToBuff.com/articles.html.

Here's just one of the many reasons why cardio is worthless for burning body fat and losing weight:

Cardio uses very few muscular fibers, meaning it requires a much lower amount of calories to perform in comparison to weight training.

As a matter of fact, did you know that just 1 pound of body fat can give your body enough energy to perform up to 12 hours of cardio???!!!

Stating it another way...you have to do 12 hours of cardio to burn just 1 pound of fat.

So, all that time that you stepped away on the cardio machine or aerobics class for an hour, working up a good sweat, and feeling good about yourself, you didn't even burn 1/4 of a pound.

As I've stated over and over in my articles, there's 2 and only 2 decisive factors in truly burning body fat:

1) intense weight training

2) eating less calories than your body needs

If you do these 2 things correctly, you'll blow away all of those poor souls stomping away on the treadmill.