7. Cardio: Your Guide to Getting Lean

TL;DR: Cardio can serve several functions. Tailor your specific approach to your goals while employing scientific tools and tactics like LISS, HIIT and Energy Tracking to achieve them as expediently as possible.

Introduction

Welcome back, biohacker. There is a lot of cognitive dissonance out there regarding how cardio actually impacts the body. Some people view cardio as a waste of time, others swear it’s the only way to go. Today, with another 101-level article we aim to clear that all up so that you can approach your cardiovascular exercise of choice with the knowledge to yield whichever results you set out to yield. We will cover not only how cardio works in the body in lay-terms, but we will also describe different approaches to doing your cardio that will aid in your performance and fitness endeavors. Before getting down to it, however, it’s important to note that this article is meant to be read alongside our Gym Science 101 article (found HERE), and our Intro to Kinesiology article (found HERE), as we will be mentioning topics and principles already covered in those articles. Therefore, we recommend skimming those bad boys and then jumping back into this article. With that out of the way, let’s jump right into our first principle necessary to understand: KCalories.

KCalories (calories/k-cals)

Note: Kcals are the ‘calories’ listed on nutrition facts. In scientific terms, a kilocalorie (Kcal), as you’ll see on European nutrition labels, is the proper way to refer to the calories we eat. However, most nutrition labels in North America drop the K, and just write calories. So, whenever you see calorie on a nutrition label, it really means kilocalorie, or 1000 calories.

Strictly speaking, “…the calorie is a unit of energy defined as the amount of heat needed to raise a litre of water by one degree of temperature….”[1] Notwithstanding, it might be useful to think of calories in the ensuing discussion, as a single unit of bodily energy, full-stop. Essentially how calories work, is your body has a basal metabolic rate (BMR). This number is unique to you and represents the number of calories your body requires to maintain its weight if you were to do nothing at all but sit on a couch all day. For most people, one’s BMR takes up the majority of the body’s daily caloric expenditure. See, the body requires energy to perform any and all functions. For example, even if you sit on the couch all day, your eyes still need to blink, your diaphragm still needs to expand and contract, and your cells still need to fuse and disperse. All of these procedures (as well as all the other infinite amounts of other biochemical procedures) in the body require a fuel source. While your BMR is a slightly moving target from day to day, for the most part, and for the purposes of your fitness goals, we can take it as a static number. Again though, figuring out what the number is for you, demands a little bit of work (despite what all those bogus online BMR calculators tell you…).

Okay great, so now you understand the idea behind BMR, but how does my BMR inform me as to how to perform cardio or why to do so? Well, understand this: if you perform more activity in the day than being literally entirely sedentary all day, your body will require more calories in order to maintain your body’s mass index (BMI). Put another way, your body will need to eat more in order to compensate for the increased expenditure in energy. Whether you go for a walk with your kids, do some vigorous chore-work around the house, or just find yourself on your feet more that day, if your goal is to maintain your BMI, you will need to compensate with more energy i.e. calories. If you do not, and your body drops below maintenance calories, your body, over time, will decrease in BMI. Conversely, if you consume more energy than your body requires to maintain the expenditure/consumption equilibrium, your body will gain BMI.

Now, let us just address a big topic here and now in order to get it out of the way. When it comes to calories, there are really two schools of thought:

A calorie’s a calorie. They’re pretty much all the same. Eat more, gain weight. Eat less, lose weight.
Calories and their sources differ in terms of their nutritional value to the body and thus ought to be treated differently. Weight gain is more affected by the type of calories we consume than most people think.

While there are arguments for both sides, this debate comes largely down to the one concerning health Vs. body composition. Briefly, they are different. Just because you have visible ripped abs, does not mean you’re healthy. Likewise, just because you have slightly more body fat than you want to see when you look in the mirror, does not mean you are unhealthy. While we will leave this debate here for now as we have other topics to cover in this 101-level article, we will return to this infamous distinction in a 201-level article, so be sure to look out for that!

Cardio & Calories

Right off the bat, cardio can really be considered any activity where you move your body resulting in an elevated heart rate for a prolonged period of time. Typical examples are running, walking, biking, swimming, jump-rope, vigorous love-making (get your cardio in people, love-making is more about the heart than you realize…), etc. Cardiovascular exercise (aerobic) requires our body to expend additional calories to our BMR and at a relatively rapid pace. This is why if your goal is weight loss, cardio plays a vital role in your goal’s achievement. However, if your goal is strictly performance and you simply want to run longer or faster for example, in the same way that all types of exercise do, cardio will require you to consume more calories than your BMR would stipulate on a day of sedentary languidness.

There is, however, a flip side to this coin. Cardio does not just push you into a caloric deficit requiring you to consume more in order to maintain your BMI. Cardio can also allow you to make up for lost ground. If your goal is to stay the same weight but you go over your allotted calories by 150 by eating those two Oreo’s (yes, it really happens that quick, unfortunately…), from a BMI perspective, it really is that simple to go and burn 150 calories in order to compensate for your overconsumption. In fact, this is the exact way that cardio, over time, burns off excess body fat. You see, 1lb of body fat translates to roughly 3500kcals (it is important to note that as the body becomes more accustomed to ongoing weight loss, this number shifts. This is explained in our Gym Science 101 article found HERE, by the principle of progressive overload).[2] So roughly, at least to begin with, you can start dropping weight at a rate of 1lb per week by issuing yourself a 500 calorie deficit for 7 days (500 x 7 = 3500 = 1lb body fat). This deficit can and should be achieved by diet to some extent and caloric expenditure (cardio) to some extent.

With how cardiovascular exercise impacts the caloric needs of the body out of the way, we will now introduce two different goals associated with cardio.

Cardio & Goals

The first goal is largely attributed to sportspeople and endurance athletes. This is the goal of aerobic performance. If aerobic performance is your flavour then you want to run/swim/bike/etc

faster or longer. While unless one is at the highest levels of competition one typically does not pay strict attention to calories, it is usually recommended that in order to encourage proper replenishment one consumes ample food following a long session. If you seek performance, we recommend again that you check our article on Intro to Kinesiology found HERE to better understand what is going on when you are exercising aerobically, and our article on Gym Science 101 found HERE in order to improve performance over time.

The second goal of cardio exercise is weight loss. When someone uses cardio as a tool for weight loss, they are still applying the principle of progressive overload, but instead of simply applying it to speed or distance, they are applying it in other ways in order either burn more calories in a shorter time, or burn calories at a familiar rate but over a longer period of time. Despite us having covered the basics of caloric expenditure and cardio above, allow us to delve deeper into two different approaches to how cardio may be performed for the sake of fat loss.

LISS (Low-Intensity Steady State)

LISS training requires that you keep your heart rate at roughly 55-60% of the absolute maximum.[3] This translates roughly to a pace where you are just able to maintain a conversation with someone. Not so fast that you’re completely out of breath, but not so slow that you would feel comfortable giving a long monologue. The purpose of this type of training is to keep the body in a zone where you are burning increased calories but are able to maintain it for at least 30 minutes without any rests or pauses. If you have the luxury of a gym or at-home treadmill, typically this can be performed by hopping on a treadmill at a slight incline and walking at a relatively rapid pace. This is a great time to read a book, listen to a podcast, or finally call your mother who hasn’t heard from you in longer than she’s comfortable with (come on dude, this woman brought you into the world, let’s grow up here…).

HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training)

Juxtaposed with LISS, HIIT demands a much more challenging approach to cardio. While it’s hard to say exactly what we are aiming to get our heart rate up to during a HIIT session, suffice it to say that there will be periods where this approach demands as close to 100% exertion as we are capable. When performing HIIT, we essentially need to sprint for say, 30 seconds, and then rest of a period triple that (90 seconds). Once that rest period is up, however, it’s right back to the 30 second sprint. Naturally, your sprints will decline in speed after 3 or 4 rounds of this, but your body is still required to exert whatever it can. While we cannot recommend how many rounds you do, we recommend that you attempt to regularly increase how many sprints you do from time to time in order to take advantage of the principle of progressive overload (covered HERE). This will allow greater results over time, regardless of whether you’re trying to lose weight, or if you simply want to improve athletic performance.

We will also mention that both LISS and HIIT should make up an ideal approach to weight loss. They provide great counterweights to each other in an ideal fitness program and help to stimulate different systems of the body, which can help it adapt in new ways and yield new results. Additionally, it’s nice to just plug into a book or podcast while performing your weekly LISS, but it’s also awesome to blast that iconic heavy metal or EDM when sprinting on the elliptical or around the track. We highly recommend that you find a way to introduce both of these cardio styles to the aerobic portion of your fitness journey, no matter your goals.

Energy Tracking Devices

So now we’ve covered much in the realm of cardio. Despite raising the notion of calorie tracking and calorie burning, you may be confused as to how to determine exactly how to know when you’ve burnt your 300 or however many calories. Luckily, you have two pretty decent options. First on the list, a cardio machine. Most cardio machines both old and new have some sort of computer on it that allows you to enter your weight and age into it. It takes those numbers and calculates them against the resistance you set the machine to in accordance with the speed you’re going. It then actively displays your likely caloric expenditure for that particular session. Okay, the obvious objection one may raise to this approach is that the machine is likely wrong due to its inability to monitor and calculate a host of other factors that go into your specific rate of caloric expenditure. This is actually an entirely valid concern. Notwithstanding though, the machine does not need to be exactly accurate. If you are going to use pretty much the same machine every time you go to the gym like I do (Daisy is a hell of an elliptical, lemme tell ye’, a real hog…) then if you enter in the same information every time, you will at least have a baseline. Yes, the machine will probably be off by 20-50 calories or so in terms of your actual expenditure, but the machine displaying burning 200 calories today and 250 calories tomorrow – assuming you enter in the same numbers – really is about an extra 50 calories (at least for functional purposes). This then, serves as more than adequate to achieve and monitor your desired goals.

Next up, and the best option of the two is the wearable device. No matter which you go with, look out for UpRiver’s list of top wearables, the wearable is pretty awesome because it goes with you wherever you go. This means that if you run, or if you jump-rope, or even if you like to go from gym to gym, the wearable will keep the baseline of your caloric expenditure. This allows you the freedom to change up your cardio exercise of choice as you’re not restricted to a machine that you rely on to give you your baseline. Not only that, but your data will likely be a whole lot more accurate as oftentimes wearables take more factors into account like body temperature and GPS movement, and you get a generally better read on your real-time vitals as a result. There are bracelets, rings, chest straps, you-name-it. Just pick your flavour and go for it. It is a real luxury to have your baseline tracker with you wherever you go; if you’re serious about your results over the long-term, investing in a wearable device might be a sensible move.

Some Quick Tips and Things To Note

Sweat. People have this weird thing about sweating. They think that if they sweat it is literally the fat leaving their body. This, for the most part, is a myth. The body can burn body fat as fuel, but that is largely because the body uses it for energy to power the body to perform a given action, and not because you are literally incinerating it off your love-handles. Cardio for the sake of caloric expenditure does not require you to sweat, although most people do and will. While it gives many athletes a sort of physiological feedback to indicate they are working hard, the body mainly requires sweat to cool itself off. If you’re walking in the cold and not sweating, for example, this does not mean that you are not burning calories. Keep that in mind.

Water weight. Contrary to our last point, sweating here does make some difference. Lots of people are holding water weight, especially if they do not sweat often. This is why people can do one long run, look in the mirror and be convinced they dropped pounds of fat. While yes, you likely burned some fat, a lot of what you just lost is water. In fact, many people become dismayed to see that after some weeks, their weight loss progress drastically reduces. While bodily adaptation to stress definitely plays a part in that, another explanation is that your body lost lots of excess water weight and now begins the real fat loss. In any case though, water weight loss will result in looking leaner, so sweating may actually provide some aesthetic benefit to the newer cardio exercise practitioner. Keep in mind though, water weight can be put on just as quickly as it is lost. She can be a harsh mistress.

Heat. Lots of people fail at cardiovascular exercise in the long run not because their actual cardio system can’t take it, but rather because they are not acclimatized to prolonged heat exposure. Regardless though, both need to be in a functional place in order to do the work required to perform the exercise. To address this, we recommend you either start by running with layers (don’t overdo it guys, we don’t need passed out biohackers everywhere), or check out our article on Heat Exposure HERE.

Motivation. While many people preach their different approaches to getting and staying motivated, at UpRiver we like to turn to science. We harness the powerful psychological principles of habits (article found HERE) in order to help us achieve our goals. In this aim, consider only watching a specific show you enjoy while on the exercise bike, or a playlist you go out of your way to make that you only listen to while on that jog you take weekly. While this is covered in our article on habits, the long and the short of it is this: pair something you really enjoy, with something you want to be motivated to do in order to increase the likelihood of the action requiring motivation to be performed.

Authors Motivation

Cardio was always an essential part of my fitness and health journey, personally. It’s basically been a love/hate relationship from the start, but I can tell you first hand that when done properly, and with a calculated approach it works wonders. It’s the kind of thing where you must trust the process at times when you’re frustrated and you don’t see instant results, but the process does in fact work. My motivation to write this article along with the Gym Science 101 article was to dispel lots of myths out there regarding how people should lose fat and gain muscle. While I dont have a ton of experience when it comes to performance cardio (other than boxing and american football), I can tell you that with practice performance naturally comes – even if your primary objective is fat loss. An interesting thing about cardio, something most people agree with I’d say, is that even if it sucks to begin with – and it will – it eventually finds its way into your heart (pun intended) and makes a home there. It becomes meditative and relaxing, despite your gears and pistons turning for prolonged periods. In any case, I hope this article helps you on your journey as it did for me.

Conclusion

There are different approaches to cardio, that emanate from us envisioning our future selves on different stages. For some, your stage is the first-place podium at the end of the local city marathon. For others, our stage is the scale that says you dropped the last of the 100lbs you set out to lose from day one. Irrespective of the goal, with discipline and properly calculated approaches, cardio can become a weapon in our arsenal for improvement in performance, and health. Along your way, there are different tools to help you achieve your goals. Some options are jump-ropes, stairmasters, swimming pools, wearable devices, and oversized hoodies. Remember that calories play a big factor when it comes to cardio. They can make or break any goal, whether it’s being in proper rested condition to take on the day’s swim, or forcing us to do that extra 6 sprints in our HIIT workout because we ate that bag of Doritos. Point is, cardio has many different aspects to it, and hopefully this article serves to illuminate your way towards achieving your goals.

Until next time biohacker, and keep moving UpRiver.