How Much Cardio Should You Do for Fat Loss?

One question I often get from clients and readers alike is, “how much cardio should I be doing for fat loss?”

If you’ve worked with me before or know my work, you know that it’s centered around (smart) strength training.

A huge passion of mine is helping people make the most of their training and nutrition efforts by making it as efficient as possible.

This means less time wasted in trial and error, guessing what might work, and — less time wasted in the gym doing unnecessary things that won’t get you closer to your goal. If I can help you learn how to eat or train in a way that gets results without wasting precious time and energy, then I consider a mission accomplished.

One way I see many wasting their efforts is with excessive cardio. Too often, I see women who want to “burn off” what they ate, or a weekend of “bad eating” by doing MORE cardio. This not only turns into a vicious cycle of binge>guilt>do more cardio>repeat, but it’s also crap for your fat loss efforts. No bueno.

Yes, cardio does play a part in the programming. It’s beneficial not only for heart health and sanity (for some,) but when done efficiently, can also play a prominent part in helping your fat loss efforts.

So the question is…

How much cardio should we be doing?

My blanket answer for clients is: as little as possible!

See, if we start out with HIIT finishers on every single workout, running or doing moderate-to-high intensity cardio most days a week, or sprinting or doing HIIT 3 or more times a week, we have nowhere to go but running ourselves in the ground if we ever need to add cardio in to accelerate fat loss efforts.

(note: this excludes cardio we do for enjoyment or activity – like a nice walk, slow jog, a hike, or other forms of play and enjoyment.)

Additionally, cardio has an inverse relationship when it comes to the hormones for burning fat. It also has an inverse relationship with your appetite and your ability to regulate it when it comes to nutrition and the amount you eat each day.

Conversely, strength training tells your body to burn more fat and be more anabolic.

This is why you won’t see TONS of cardio in any of my programming. For example, in my LBB, we have one HIIT day and one steady state day (sometimes two HIITs and no SS.) We also have one finisher a week on a strength workout.

The idea is to incrementally build the intensity of that cardio to achieve the desirable effect. It’s not about a certain length of cardio you’re doing or how many minutes of cardio you’re doing; it’s about how much fat you’re burning.

So instead of adding MORE and more cardio, use intensity as a tool to keep seeing results. Incline, speed, power, etc. You can go a little bit longer, but the goal isn’t to do hours and hours of cardio, right? The goal is to burn fat.

Again, this isn’t counting outdoor walks, easy cardio, and play — this is more for mental well being and enjoyment.

Keep this in mind when it comes to cardio — I hope you find this helpful! XO