Weight Loss: Resistance vs Cardio

In this post I'll look at what is more effective for losing weight resistance training or cardio.


According to to a new study in the American Journal of Physiology cardio training is the most effective way to lose weight is cardio training.

The training that was measured in this study was: 1)Resistance Training, which comprised 3 days/wk, 8 exercises, 3 sets/exercise, 8-12 reps/set 2) Aerobic Training, which was equivalent to 19.2 km/wk (12 miles/wk at 75% peak O2 uptake and 3) was both of these combined.

For this study "weight" was measured by the change in the amount of Fat (both subcutaneous, visceral, and liver fat) you can clearly see from the graph below that resistance training was clearly a lot less effective at reducing these type of fat as Cardio training and a combination of them both according to the authors of the study were statistically indistinguishable from just cardio.

But if you take a look at this table what you see is that resistance training does make you lose subcutaneous fat and this is the fat beneath the skin which is the fat that make you look fat, and the combined training increased the amount of this fat that was lost.  This study would suggest that if you want to lose fat then doing a combined Cardio and resistance training program is best but if you really want to choose one over the other then you should go for cardio.

However this doesn't take into account the other benefits of resistance training so I would recommend doing both types of training because then although you may not lose that much more fat you will increase the muscle tone and this will make you look better as well.