There have been lots of questions (as always), but particularly so lately it seems, that have been asking the best ways to lose fat and what not. Anyway, a lot of people have been suggesting to just up the cardio. Fine, that might help. But lack of cardio is not the cause for less progress, nor is increased cardio the solution to not losing fat. Energy going out must be more than energy coming in to lose fat. It's that simple. You don't need cardio. You need to expend more than you take in. That can be accomplished with just a weight training routine and quite frankly, even without one.

Lack of progress almost ALWAYS means fix your diet, not run more. While I love cardio for CV health and aiding in calorie burn, you can't out train a bad diet. I just felt that should be addressed since people just keep throwing out "cardio", "add cardio", do "x amount of cardio x times per week and you're fine," and less often are they saying "eat less."

tru dat sista yo

If i could just figure out a way to get my foot in the door on one of those "take this pill, and eat anything you want" scam, i'd be rich. I just got back from the local health food store, the four people in line in front of me were all holding a box with another diet scam in it.

If I could just come up with something...

hahahhaah'

tru dat sista yo

Haha, it sucks how many people buy into that

poor diet = poor cardio

good diet = good cardio

There is no getting around not eatting right.

That's flat out completely 100% wrong. It's not even a matter of opinion. If I eat great for 10 years and don't do the stereotypical "cardio" (i.e. running) and you eat bad for 10 years and do cardio, I am healthier, guaranteed. Plus, people seem to think that weight lifting doesn't increase your CV health, which is amazing to me. To add, I was talking about losing fat, not CV health anyway.

i totally disagree, a "good diet" will go a long way further then "good cardio"

You misunderstood the question. It isn't about health. It's about fitness. If you think health and fitness are the same thing, then you have no idea what you are talking about.

Misunderstood the question? He wrote the question

And you clearly didn't read it either as he was talking about losing fat, not improving health or fitness

So Ride on is completely correct, to lose weight you need to control diet. It's the one thing that's vital. Cardio is good, so is weight training (you can also use weight training for cardio) but you won't lose fat doing either if your diet is ****

This. Frankly DL, I've been reading some of your posts and they're somewhat random. And you couldn't even be bothered to read this thread in its entirety when there were what, like 5 total posts? Oh and at the time that I said "healthier" twice, I specified EXACTLY what I was talking about. So I don't really know what YOU are talking about...

Does anyone have any research at all to back up anything they are saying? If not, then we're just throwing bricks at each other.

As for good diet and no cardio for 10 years vs good cardio and bad diet for 10 years, it's a difficult question. Depends how much cardio, how bad diet, and how you define healthy.
If we're talking about weight loss (like the original topic in this thread), then a calorie deficit is clearly the most important thing, and exercise doesn't really lead to weight loss unless the people exercising also control their diet. If you start to exercise you will typically eat more so you stay at about the same weight. This is why intervention studies with only exercise seldom show as good results in weight loss as diet alone or diet + training interventions.

Talking about health in general, though:
There are things about exercise that I don't know if a good diet can replace, though, like physiological (good) cardiac hypertrophy, endothelial function (not saying a bad diet doesn't negatively affect endothelial function!), etc.

Also, there is such a thing as "the healthy obesity phenotype" now, what causes this isn't really understood that well, but it is believed that exercise plays an important part in creating this phenotype. There hasn't been done a lot of research on it, though, since most people focus on the deleterious effects of obesity.

1. Paying attention is half the battle.
2. No spitting
3. No guns at the table

What?!?!? You cannot burn fat without fitness, so obviuosly he was referring to fitness. It's seems as though you are arguing with yourself because no where did I read anyone suggesting that one is BETTER than the other. It truly doesn't take a certain level of expertise to understand the importance of both cardio and nutrition. A sixth grader could tell you that.

Well then you must be in 5th grade, because you clearly don't understand the difference. You CAN burn fat without doing cardio, EVER. Not that I would recommend that or do it myself, but of course it's possible. I do cardio, but you don't NEED to if we're talking about fat loss. You do realize that your body burns calories every day from its own metabolic processes and your general activity, sans cardio, right? And weight lifting, yeah that burns tons of calories too. And it adds muscle, which costs more calories to maintain. You don't ever have to do cardio to lose fat, ever. Let me repeat that. You don't EVER have to do cardio to lose fat.