Movement: Cardio

This month's theme is all about movement and the first topic I want to cover is cardio I know many people try to kill themselves with cardio in an effort to lose weight. But when it comes to losing weight and making sure that your metabolism is operating at the most optimal rate, it's really important to build muscle. So you want to prioritize weight training, which I'll talk more about in a separate video, but cardio should be used as a tool for weight loss. If your primary goal is heart health or you're marathoner or triathloner, then cardio is going to be your primary workout.

However, if you're just looking to lose weight, build muscle, and get lean (or a lot of people like to call it "get toned"), you really want to use cardio sparingly and for overall heart health. What does that mean? That means using cardio maybe one high intensity workout a week, maybe one steady-state workout. But it's really important to make sure that you rest enough. A lot of people like to focus on those high intensity workouts all the time and as we get older, it really stresses your body and you really need to build in time for rest and recovery.

So that's my tip for cardio. Again, important for heart health, maybe one or two times a week. Ideally, it would be one high intensity and one steady-state. But it's more important to get movement and steps throughout the day. So get up and move throughout the day versus having that one dedicated workout. How much cardio are you currently doing?