Cardio: The Ultimate Fat Killer

If you have spent any time trying to find the best ways of losing fat, you have come across the dreaded C word: cardio. There is a ton of information available about cardiovascular exercise, and much of it is highly contradictory. Some claim that cardio is worthless and provides no benefit, while others tout its amazing benefits. If you want to know the truth about cardio exercise, you have come to the right place. Keep reading to find out why cardio is the ultimate fat killer.

What is Cardio?
Cardio, also referred to as cardiovascular or aerobic exercise, is essentially any kind of activity that makes your heart beat faster. As your heart rate increases, it pumps the blood through your body faster. In order to do this, it requires your body to burn energy, which typically comes from the calories you consume each day. When you are trying to lose weight, you have to burn more calories than your body actually needs for normal functions, and cardio is an excellent way to do just that.

Benefits of Cardio Exercise
You already know that cardio helps you burn off those calories before they can be stored as fat. However, that is not the only benefit of including cardio in your weight loss efforts. In fact, several other benefits help you and your body get healthy.

Increases Metabolism – Your metabolism is the process that ultimately dictates how much of the food you eat is stored, and how much is used as energy. Obviously, slower metabolism means less weight loss. When you incorporate cardio into your weight loss efforts, you will increase your metabolism, helping your body to burn off more fat. When you increase the intensity of your cardio, you also increase your metabolism so you can burn off even more fat.

Makes You Feel Good – When you do cardio exercise, you actually make yourself feel good. As you exercise, it causes your body to release endorphins, which are often referred to as the “feel good” hormones. In addition to the release of these hormones, exercising also works as a stress reliever, which counteracts the stress hormone, cortisol. When cortisone levels are high, it results in an increase in stored fat as well as a host of other health problems. Adding cardio to your weight loss decreases these hormones, helping your metabolism to stay high.

Better Muscle Recovery – If you are also lifting weights as a part of your weight loss, cardio exercise can help you minimize those sore muscles after hitting the weights. Moderate cardio helps to push more blood to your muscle tissues and cells, which helps to get rid of many of the byproducts that result when muscles are given an intense workout. This will result in less soreness later on, helping you to get back in the gym to continue building fat-burning muscle.

As you can see, cardio really is the ultimate fat killer. It provides many benefits that help your body burn fat faster and more efficiently, helping you to reach your weight loss goals even faster.