Strength training or cardio: which to choose when you're losing weight

The argument over “which burns more fat” usually goes nowhere, because it’s the wrong question. Your weight depends first and foremost on food. Training answers a different question: what exactly you lose, and how you feel.

How much a workout really burns

Less than you’d like. An hour of brisk walking or a moderate workout is a few hundred kilocalories: one decent snack. So “working off” food in the gym almost never succeeds, while overestimating what you burned is easy.

Watches and gym machines tend to overstate what you burned. Treat their numbers as an estimate, and don’t add everything they show to your daily target.

What strength training does

When you eat less, your body burns not only fat but muscle too. Strength training gives it a reason to keep the muscle. You’ll hardly see the difference on the scale; you’ll notice it in the mirror and in how you feel.

• Two or three full-body sessions a week are enough.
• What matters most is adding a little at a time: weight, reps or sets.
• You won’t set records in a deficit. Holding on to what you have is already a good result.

What cardio does

Walking, running, cycling and swimming burn extra calories and build endurance, and you usually sleep better afterwards. The most useful cardio is the kind that happens every day: steps. They don’t wear you out, they don’t stoke your appetite the way a hard workout does, and over a week they burn more than a single run.

Which to choose

If you’re short of time: strength training twice a week and a walk every day. It’s a boring answer, and it works for most people.

If you like running, run. A workout you actually turn up for beats a perfect programme you dropped after a month.

How to log so you can see progress

In Kalorika you can log a workout in words: “bench press 4 by 8 at 60, rows 3 by 10 at 50” or “ran 5 km in 28 minutes”. Strength sessions are saved by exercise and set, cardio by time and distance.

• In strength training, watch whether your weights and reps go up from month to month.
• In cardio, watch your pace and how easy your usual distance feels.
• Don’t judge a workout by the calories burned. It’s the least reliable number of all.

If you have injuries or heart disease, or haven’t exercised for a long time, see a doctor first — they’ll tell you where it’s safe to start.