If I'm losing weight at a good pace (1-3 pounds per week) without cardio, what exactly are the benifits of doing it? Is it possible to effectively lose more weight and conserve muscle (let's say 4 pounds a week) if I combine cardio with a caloric deficit? I know there must be some benifits to using cardio, but I'm not sure what all of them are.

I believe that cardio is supplemental to weight loss. Cardio is more about cardiovascular fitness than weight loss is my book. Diet is most important. Cardio can also be good in that by burning 300 calories you get to eat 300 more calories. So if you are starving this can be a way to "earn" more to eat.

You would be creating a bigger deficit by adding in cardio without upping the calories. Possibly eating too little.

Aside from cardiovascular health and fitness, a good reason as such, I'm also doing cardio because training in that area allows for faster recovery between lifting sets and exercises.

Cardio's good for a couple things:

First of all, it burns calories a lot faster than just sitting around. In this way, it's a great option for managing your caloric surplus/deficit. One of my favorite things about doing cardio is that it allows me to eat more than I would be able to if I wasn't doing it.

More importantly, cardiovascular activity has been shown to alter the way your body processes nutrients, in a good way. This is referred to as nutrient partitioning, and it basically means that your body becomes more efficient at storing the good stuff and burning the bad stuff, leading to a more favorable body composition whether you're trying to gain or lose weight.

Moreover, it just makes sense to do it. Our bodies are built to move, and you'd be surprised how energized you can start feeling just from doing a little cardio here and there.

Having said that, congrats on losing the weight, and esp. without having done any cardio. You're totally lucky! I think a lot of people feel locked in to doing more cardio than they'd really like to be doing because their bodies have come to expect it, which makes it hard to cut back without putting on weight. I definitely think that you should try introducing a little jogging or cycling into your routine, but don't go overboard. Keep a vigilant eye on your progress and if what you're doing's working, keep it up!

If you are losing fat without cardio, don't do any. Unless you enjoy physical activity such as biking, hiking, etc, etc, losing the fat without conventional cardio will be more much more muscle sparing. Unless you have reached a plateau, less is always best.

heres another good reason to do it to be added to the reasons abobe....


to break homoestasis when it comes... or more commonly knows as a PLATEAU!

do what your doing untill you see no more progress. then its time to start tweaking your program up and cardio would be a great addition and a homeostasis/plateau breaker indeed. just one tool in the box for you to use to keep seeing progress after a stall.

my guess is that you are not an endomorph but rather an echtomorph.

Well I definitely haven't done it all without cardio. Just some weeks I end up doing it only once or none at all, and yet I still see results. Other weeks when I start slacking on the cardio, my weight plateaus or goes up slightly, at which point I add in a few good fasted LISS sessions. Luckily I enjoy hiking and there are some great trails in my area, so it's usually not that much of a burden.

Dodus the nutrient partitioning concept sounds interesting I'll have to look it up.

If I'm losing weight at a good pace (1-3 pounds per week) without cardio, what exactly are the benifits of doing it?

What's your VO2max? If it's high, you don't need to worry so much about cardio. But if it's not, there's good reasons to train up your heart even if you are losing weight.

Well I definitely haven't done it all without cardio. Just some weeks I end up doing it only once or none at all, and yet I still see results. Other weeks when I start slacking on the cardio, my weight plateaus or goes up slightly, at which point I add in a few good fasted LISS sessions. Luckily I enjoy hiking and there are some great trails in my area, so it's usually not that much of a burden.

Dodus the nutrient partitioning concept sounds interesting I'll have to look it up.

Go for it--www.johnberardi.com is a good place to dig up some research. Though it appears that the nutrient partitioning effects of cardio take place on a relatively short-term basis--as in doing cardio has an immediate effect on the food you've recently eaten or are about to eat. I don't know about long term though, and for this reason I agree with mastover. Don't get yourself accustomed to a high-volume cardio routine if you're already losing weight, if for no other reason than its much less of a hassle to have the option to add cardio when you DO need it, rather than having to keep doing it just to maintain loss.

Read over Tom Venuto Book; "Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle". He's explained it all pretty good; the combination of Cardio with Weight Training for fat loss. Also Jeremy Likeness book is pretty helpful too.

One reason I can think of is that your heart will need to do more work when you have more muscle. If you only grow your muscles, your stamina will deteriorate.

If I'm losing weight at a good pace (1-3 pounds per week) without cardio, what exactly are the benifits of doing it? Is it possible to effectively lose more weight and conserve muscle (let's say 4 pounds a week) if I combine cardio with a caloric deficit? I know there must be some benifits to using cardio, but I'm not sure what all of them are.
The most important reason is that weight loss itself does not generally improve your health all that much. It is a stronger heart that will give you a longer life.

sounds like you is a lazy lad. get up on yer arse and do the darn cardio. It is good for you.(assuming you got time)

Aside from the health benefits for the long term, on your fat loss journey you will soon encounter whats is known as a plateau as mentioned before. A key way to overcome the plateau is to manipulate your cardio. A few months down the line you may hit a plateau and start to think why you can't lose any more fat.

There is a big difference in losing weight and losing fat . To accelerate fat loss you should incorporate cardio.

I have successfully cut massive amounts of fat with ZERO cardio, quite a few times. I will say however that cardio has health benefits so I see a definite advantage to including it in one's schedule.

There are other ways to benefit from cardiovascular-"type" work. Cut your rest periods in-between sets. :)

For nothing but aesthetic purposes, if you are having success right now then I'd leave out the cardio. If you're looking for overall health just take a walk in the morning at the least (a "powerwalk" - fast pace).

Yes, it's true that after some time you'll probably hit a wall where fat-loss slows (or stops). Including cardio at this point can help. Once I hit about 8-9% I find including cardio to be a big help.

I think its possible to lose fat without cardio - just look at 1FastGTX. But some people tend to get 'loose skin'. This is because they have lost fat around the internal organs through diet, but they didn't lose the subcutaneous fat (fat under the skin).

However, as mentioned before, there are people who don't do cardio that still don't have this loose skin problem.

sounds like you is a lazy lad. get up on yer arse and do the darn cardio. It is good for you.(assuming you got time)
That's a totally unproductive post and rather rude assumption for someone you hardly know.
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Cardio is good for your health....you've had plenty of good advise and reasons why it's beneifcial....the next step is yours to take if you want to.