The Best Fat Burner Cardio

Hey Friends,

Here’s a fun experiment. Go out and randomly ask a 100 people on street - “Which is the best form of cardio to burn fat?”

Here is the kind of answers you would most likely get:

• Just run a lot bro - run like forrest gump.
• Do lots of HIIT, anything that makes you sweat for 1 hour.
• Do lots of crunches and umm..run a lot.

The most stereotypical notion of fitness, isn’t it.

I don’t know if you have noticed - but this kind of advice has never really worked for anyone. Yet it is the first thing people do when they start their fitness journey. Rookie mistake.

Well, then what is the best form of cardio to burn fat?

Answer - Walking.

Every time I tell this to people, they look at me as if I am about to finish a joke.

How can an activity so chill, so passive, be the best fat burning tool? It doesn’t even feel like “hard work” or “torture”. Isn’t fitness supposed to be torture?

Walking is the best way to boost your metabolism - your daily calorie expenditure. Nothing comes even close.

There are 3 major reasons why walking is the best fat burning cardio.

1. Walking is passive

That means you don't have to necessarily make out extra time to walk. You can walk while doing other activities as well, like:

• Taking your daily calls - work/family/friends. Don’t sit and chat, walk and chat.
• Listening to podcasts/audiobooks/speeches/lectures.
• Just hanging out with friend/lover - have you ever tried a walking date in the city?
• Thinking/Planning time

Other cardios are not passive. If you do HIIT or run for half an hour - that’s all you can do in that half an hour. And then you need another half an hour to get back to normal life.

Walking on the other hand, can be as passive as you want. It really integrates well into a busy lifestyle, converting sedentary to highly active.

2. Walking is scalable

What do I mean by that? In business world, we call something scalable when you can increase it’s production without increasing it’s production cost a lot. Economies of scale.

The 2 biggest costs of any cardio are -

1. The time it takes
2. The stress it imposes on your body

Walking is the least stressful cardio, and also the most passive as we already discussed.

The stress part of the equation is something people don’t really take seriously. People don’t seem to realise that - “the recovery capacity of a human body is limited.”

Do a lot of walking - and it will not mess with your recovery from strength training sessions, studies have shown that it can even improve your recovery.

Do a lot of HIIT - and you know it will mess up your recovery. You won't be able to sustain it long-term. Facts!

Friends, I hope it goes without saying - but 80% of your exercise plan should be strength training, and not cardio.

Cardio is supplemental for fat loss.
Strength Training is essential.

So in that 20% - you have to be smart with your cardio, such that it doesn’t end up effecting your recovery & performance during the strength work.

3. Walking is Safe

That’s right. The chances of you injuring your knee or ankle or any other joint during walking is next to zero. Notice also that these injuries are common for people doing lots of running or HIIT.

This holds true specially for obese or overweight people. Doing lots of HIIT or running for fat loss would be a very bad idea in such a case.

Most people who are just starting out and who fall prey to this idea of “lots of running/HIIT to burn fat” - are overweight. Connect the dots...

I would add to this letter that by no means I am bashing HIIT or running or other forms of cardio.

Doing some high intensity cardio work can be a great value add to your fitness. You can add 15 mins of HIIT of your choice 2-3 times a week.

Just make sure it is a safe mode of cardio for your body weight, and also positioned away from the gym workout of the same muscle group.

All I am saying here is that your staple cardio should be walking - because walking is the most passive and scalable.

Hope this issue helps!

Have a great day.

_
Siddharth

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