This is a question I get asked quite a lot by my client’s who are trying to lose weight, and it is not a straightforward answer.
A number of studies have found that doing cardio (running) for 30 mins at a moderate pace you burn on average ~250 calories. While during that same time frame when weight training you only burn ~120-200 calories. Obviously there are numerous factors that can affect this calorie burn but this has been backed up by numerous studies. Basically this tells us that per session cardio exercise helps us burn more calories than weight training.
This finding doesn’t necessarily answer the question of which is better for weight loss though. Many of these studies also indicate that weight training is more effective at building muscle than cardio training. One study measured participants’ resting metabolisms during 24 weeks of weight training. In men, weight training led to a 9% increase in resting metabolism. The effects in women were smaller, with an increase of almost 4%. While this may sound good, it’s important to think about how many calories this represents. For the men, resting metabolism increased by about 140 calories per day. In women, it was only about 50 calories per day. Thus, weight training and building a little bit of muscle won’t make your metabolism skyrocket, but it may increase it by a small amount.
However, weight training also has other important calorie-burning benefits. Specifically, research has shown that you burn more calories in the hours following a weight training session, compared to a cardio workout.In fact, there are reports of resting metabolism staying elevated for up to 38 hours after weight training, while no such increase has been reported with cardio. This means that the calorie-burning benefits of weights aren’t limited to when you are exercising. You may keep burning calories for hours or days afterward. For most types of exercise, a more intense workout will increase the number of calories you burn afterward.
In other words someone who does alot of weight training and has a high muscle mass will likely have a higher metabolism than someone who just performs cardio exercise which will lead to a higher calorie burn at rest.
So what does this mean?
A lot of these studies conclude with saying a combination of both types of training will likely be best for achieving weight loss and I would tend to agree with this verdict. It is generally recommended that at least 150 mins of moderate to vigorous cardio activity are performed per week and around 2-3 strength sessions. However I cannot stress enough that this has to be in conjunction with good nutrition in order to achieve effective weight loss.
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