.. If you're only trying to lose fat?

I mean, you're trying to lose weight - so you cut your energy intake by 500 calories per day.

Where does that leave running? It can burn more calories, sure, but if you can achieve this by eating less then what's the point?

I guess that what I'm trying to ask is, are there any other benefits (related to fat loss) aside from caloric burn offered by cardiovascular exercise?

I've had the same thought process. Lets say your at a stable weight, and have found your caloric maintenance value. Whats the difference in terms of fat loss between eating 500 calories less or eating the same and burning 500 calories worth extra calories? I mean I understand you get the bonus of improving your health with the running and such, which is why i'm doing my cardio. It's just a thought I have.

Because running improves fat oxidation. Just because you lower your intake by 500 calories does not mean your going to lose 1lb a week, your body's metabolism is not set in stone like that. Your metabolism drops and rises according to your caloric level, running encourages to keep the metabolism up.

If you are overweight, you might be able to lose some weight without any cardio yet. But there will be a point where your going to need to exercise.

Exercise in general ups your metabolism for some time after exercise. It also improves insulin sensitivity, which can be an issue if you have diabetes or prediabetes.

Cardio-type exercise also strengthens your heart. The muscles used will also get somewhat stronger. More muscle means more calorie burning even when at rest.

With regard to running, it can be time-efficient if you run to places that you would go to anyway (e.g. commuting to work, going to the gym, etc.).

Running is quite calming as well, just zoned out pounding the road with a crystal clear mind knowing your the only one up for miles and doing something is a rush for weirdos like me

Completely off topic I know

Anyway running does increase your overall health as well through cardiac benifits and also mental.

Anyone get Runner's World magazine? There's a guy in there this week who weighed 396 lbs 2 years ago he changed his diet, got into walking, graduated to running and now weighs 180, has run at least one marathon and has a resting HR of 42.


..this MONTH I should say

I personally love the differences i've been noticing from my cardio. I hopped on a bike for the first time in AGES yesterday and biked to my buddies house. Now it wasnt really far away, but I found a pace that I could sustain nonstop that shocked me. I don't know what speed I was going but I was cruising pretty dang good without breaking a sweat or panting. Something I can never say I have found before. It was amazing.

Biking is awesome, it's also much lower-impact on the body as compared to running...plus it's easier to carry water, food, long-sleeved shirt, cell phone, etc. I love to ride my mountain bike through the local fire-roads...amazing cardio, just awesome!

Back to subject....

Let's ignore the obvious benefits that exercise offers.....ya know, respiratory, circulatory, etc....we all know and agree about that.

Okay...so what's the difference between eating 500 less calories vs. exercising 500 calories off your body. Shooting from the hip, I'm gonna say "not much"....it would seem like a wash, at least on a single instance basis. But who cares about a single instance.

So let's consider a more long-term situation, like a month. So what if we exercise 500-calories per day vs. eating 500 calories less per day.....over the course of one month.

When you eat less on a regular basis it'll sorta give your body the idea that there's less food available...so this will tend to suppress/reduce your metabolism, maybe shed some lean muscle, etc.

On the flip-side, a 500 calorie workout will burn those 500 calories...but when you place a regular demand on your body to generate energy, your cells respond by creating more mitochondria which are the powerhouse's that help create more energy: the amount of mitrochondria sorta IS your metabolism (or so my research and reading have suggested).

So the answer is simple: one reduces your metabolism, lean muscle and likely adjust things to that your body only feels about a 250 calorie deficit.

The other obviously increases your metabolism and tends to build more muscle...quite the opposite of just eating less. Over time you're body will adapt and become more efficeint at doing that exercise...so it'll take longer, but in this static example we're just presuming you'll exercise to a fixed amount of caloric burn.

So this is what happens over the course of one month...it puts you on different roads. What happens with a single instance, it's more like just a step towards either road...it doesn't set anything in stone, but it rather dictates a direction.

Thanks for all the great answers - it's good to know that I'm not the only one that's thought about this before. I love to think that the more you punish your body with hard exercise, the stronger your heart gets.

When I'm doing my long-haul mountain bike rides, I frequently spend lots of time thinking about all sorts of stuff. Everything from health-related stuff to wondering why woman don't wear leotard/unitards in gyms anymore (that usually happens when I pass a gal who is wearing some righteous riding shorts)....

I too would like to think that the more you work the heart, the stronger it gets.....but at the same time, I know from expereince that in the real world the more you work a valve, the sooner it wears-out! I more so imagine a certain "fine-line" where prolonged exercise passes the point of benefit and becomes more like wear & tear or even damage. From what I've read, the health benefits are said to be max'd-out at one hour, everything after that is just burning calories for fat-loss. I wonder if it wouldn't be all-around safer/better (call it optimal?) to just exercise for that 1 hour and then substitute a calorie restriction in place of further cardio. Hard to say.

And there again is another question...the intensity of your exercise also comes into play. The cardiology departments at hospitals have a test they call the Stress-Test....they basically put people on treadmills to see how hard & long they can go, they use this to determine your fitness & heart-health level. They will openly warn you that this test can induce a heart-attack!! What it does for me is makes me REALLY ask myself if doing intense levels of HIIT is really the smartest thing to do?

Some would certainly argue that the higher intensity is the very thing that helps open-up the artieries and forces the body to adapt to a higher/better level of respiratory/curculatory condition...and yet we know this can provoke a heart-attack at the same time. We also know that as we age we are supposed to use a lower max-heart rate too.

So...2 things:

1) If you ask 5 different cardiologist/heart-specialist....you'll get 5 different answers, so there is no absolute truth. And each year research tells us new things. Only a decade ago they used to put heart-attack victims on bed-rest & relaxation....and today they almost immediately put them on treadmills and put 'em to work to try to build new collaterals in the heart muscle! Science changes!

2) We don't have an owner's manual for our bodies!

As for your being alone in wondering these things...heck no, I obsess and bother with them all day! Got any more questions???? I may not have answers, but I have theories, research and some basic understandings.

Haha I think I can definately sympathise with the thoughts that go through your head during intense physical stress. Sometimes even during lifting, I'll feel like I'm about to have a quadruple heart failure- usually when I'm about to reach my last rep of the military press.

But sometimes you know, that gives me a bit of a kick. Perhaps its masochistic.. I know that I'm ultimately doing myself good, making myself bigger, faster, stronger, better. 'The more we bleed in training, the less we bleed in battle' and so on..


As for HIIT, I still haven't tried it seriously, in a way in scares the hell out of me - I'll be out in the countryside all by myself, how long would it be before they found my corpse?!

I think I saw this during airforce physical assesment, you wear an oxygen mask, and you're rigged up to many pulse sensors. I don't know if they offer it in UK health centers, we have a bit of a compensation culture going on here!

Man if only. But it's impossible to write a 'one-size-fits-all-guide' - there are 6.2Bn people on this blue rock we live on, each one just a little bit different. One man's warm up stretches may be another man's heart attack.

Sure, saves starting a new thread.

What's your view on fasted cardio? If you've just started to cut directly after a bulk? i.e, you're not 'overweight' rather you've accumulated some fat during your muscle building phase, and want to trim down *just a little* in order to get the abs you've built-up more visible.

I guess I just want to avoid muscle loss so soon. I'm new to all this as you can tell.

The only other difference I know worth mentioning is muscle burns more calories than fat. So by running or exercising in general you transform fat to muscle causing more calories to be burnt during exercise and even normal actives. Therefore, by running for a month, at the end of day 30 your resting metabolic rate will be a bit higher than if you cut calorie intake for 30 days and did not exercise.

Not true...

Really? Every book or online article I have ever read agrees with my statement. Here are a few links that support what I said above:

How Many Calories Does Muscle Really Burn?

Raise Your Metabolism and Burn More Calories | CaloriesPerHour.com

Possible Error Detected

EDIT: I see what you are saying is not true. And you are correct. Fat does not become muscle. It is badly worded on my part. I was trying to say, in the whole schema of the body, Fat goes away and muscle is formed.