5 Reasons Why I stopped Doing Cardio-Only Workouts
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Women seem to love doing lots of cardio…but do they actually love it? O Do they actually love it or do they think that cardio is the ONLY way to build the body they want? Do they think cardio is the best bang for their buck when the workout? Or, do they just not know what other types of workouts to do?
I still do cardio from time-to-time, but my workout routine doesn’t revolve around cardio anymore. I used to spend 1-2 hours A DAY doing cardio, and now I realized that was one of the worst things I could have done with my time.
So in this episode of Embrace Your Real, I’m going to share 5 reasons why I decided to stop doing cardio-only workouts and how I benefited from it.
Links mentioned in this episode:
Calculate your maintenance calories with this free ebook: www.juliealedbetter.com/free-ebook
Start your journey with the Macro Counting Made Simple Online Academy: www.macrocountingmadesimple.com
Episode 243: What Are the Four Phases of Macro Counting?
Episode 218: What the Heck are Secondary Protein Sources + Why Should You Eat Them?
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Transcript:
Hey there, beautiful human. You're listening to Embrace Your Real with me, Julie Ledbetter. A podcast where I empower you to just be you. With each episode, I issue a dose of real talk and actionable advice for building your confidence, honoring your body, and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned if you're ready to embrace your real. Let's get heads, girl. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Embrace Your podcast. Really, really excited about today's episode because we are chatting all about cardio. I for years especially in college was considered a cardio buddy. I loved my cardio. I thought that cardio was the only way to build the body that I wanted. And I know that so many other women are in the same boat as me, just speaking with thousands of women on a weekly basis and just kind of hearing like, well, is strength training going to make me bulky? If so, I'm trying to lose weight. And the only way to do that is through cardio. And so I want to kind of break this down. And my podcast today is all about five reasons why I stop doing cardio only workouts. And I do want to say I still do cardio on a weekly basis. It's just a lot shorter than what I used to do. And some honestly, some weeks I don't do cardio, but it's kind of just how I feel. And the fact of the matter is my workout routine doesn't revolve around cardio anymore. I used to literally spend you guys 1 to 2 hours a day doing cardio, like in college. Find me in the college gym, on the elliptical machine or on the Stairmaster or on the treadmill. At least a minimum of one hour, sometimes even 2 hours.
And so I know what it's like to feel enslaved to cardio. And so I wanted to just kind of bring awareness to this and hopefully this will connect with some of you guys. And I now realize that it's honestly one of the worst things that I could have done for the results and for the things that I was looking to accomplish in my health and fitness journey. So in this episode, that's exactly what I want to be talking about. Five Reasons Why I stopped doing cardio only workouts, but before I gave in, I wanted to share this review. It comes from Emily1715. She gave a five star review and said a thank you. I so appreciate that you are unafraid to share your faith on this podcast. I love nutrition and macro info, but more than that, I'm a Christian and I love that you speak about your faith because it truly should spill over into every facet of our lives. Thank you. I couldn't agree more with you, Emily, and I appreciate you so much. Thank you so much for this review. Thank you so much for your words. I appreciate every single one of your guys' reviews and I value it so much. It is just literally feedback on this podcast. And so if you have been helped in any way, shape or form by this podcast, my one ask of you is that you go to any Apple device, it could be a MacBook, it could be an iPad, your iPhone and go to the podcast app, type in, embrace a real and leave a reading interview that is just again feedback for us and it helps us know what is helping you. And it also really does help us in terms of reaching new women and more women so that they can feel empowered and encouraged and educated when it comes to honoring their body through movement, mindset and nutrition.
Okay, so let's dove into the five reasons why I stop doing cardio only workouts. Number one, I realized I don't need to do cardio to build the body that I want and to be my overall healthier self. Now, most people think cardio is the answer to seeing results that they want, but in fact, you could never do a day of intentional cardio again and still live a very healthy life and build the body that you want. I'm honestly not sure where we as women got into our heads that the only way to build the body that we want is to spend hours a week doing cardio. But for me personally, I enjoy doing resistance training way more than I do cardio. Of course, like I said, I still enjoy some cardio classes. I personally incorporate hit, which is high intense interval training into my sessions. I love hit cardio, but I am limiting it and I only do no more than two sessions a week. Whereas, you know, compared to doing seven days a week, 1 to 2 hours of cardio a day. But personally, I am just so much more happier now not feeling the need to force it into my daily activity. So if you dread cardio days, please stop doing them. If you love cardio days, keep them. I will hopefully educate you as to why I don't think you should be doing cardio every single day like intentional, long, less cardio sessions. But I am a huge believer in general that you should be doing the movement that brings you the most joy. And if cardio doesn't bring you joy, then you must stop forcing yourself to do it. Because if you are working out purely to change your body composition, cardio itself is not going to do that.
Resistance training is the answer for you. You will build the body that you want so much more easily with resistance. Training alone and resistance training alone will give you a much more toned and strong body than cardio ever. Well, so if you only have 30 minutes to workout, I am always going to recommend resistance training over doing a cardio session simply because it is way more productive and effective. Number two, I realize that too much cardio isn't a good thing. Like I mentioned before, yes, cardio can be part of a solid workout routine. Like I said, I personally love doing hit cardio. I love the cycle. Like there is nothing like a good 15~20 minute hit cycle workout. But here's what I finally learn. Longer cardio sessions, like staying on the elliptical for 90 minutes or longer, like me in college or going for regular, you know, nine, ten, 11 mile runs can actually eat at your lean muscle mass, which is essential for increasing your metabolism to burn more calories throughout the day. It actually causes the body to become more endurance focused, which stores energy as fat, to ensure that it has plenty of, you know, fuel to keep you going for all of those miles in the future. Your body is very smart and biofeedback is so important, and this is a cool thing about our body. It truly is a machine. And so it learns over time like what you are doing consistently. And not to mention it can actually dramatically increase your appetite, which is making you more susceptible to be going over the nutrition that you should actually be having simply because of those reasons. Again, I'm not saying you can't or shouldn't do cardio, and if you love to run or cycle for reasons other than losing weight, then I am all means.
Please do not stop doing that. Do what you love. But if the only reason why you're doing cardio is to lose weight or to change the composition of your body and you're punishing your body, overdoing it with cardio, then it's time to stop. If your primary goal is fat loss or to change your body composition, there are there forms of exercise that will give you a much better bang for your buck. For example, resistance training. You can workout way less, but in fact see more results. And this is because the more muscle mass that your body has, the more fat that you'll burn. Which leads me to number three. Number three, I realized that the resistance training was giving me a lot more bang for my buck compared to cardio. Now, like I mentioned earlier, if I only have 30 minutes to work out, I am without a doubt going to choose to do resistance training over cardio every single time simply because it's such a better use of my time. Now, resistance training itself helps me burn calories around the clock, so while I'm chillin on the couch at night, I'm still burning calories. On the other hand, cardio only allows me to burn calories while I'm doing the act of that cardio. And in my opinion, that just isn't productive and it's not a productive use of my time compared to resistance training. So let's say, for example, in a 30 minute cardio, I would burn around 300 calories. Now in resistance training, I might burn 150 to 200 calories depending on how hard I go. But when you look at it like this, sure, cardio might look like the better option when you just kind of look at that. But 300 calories versus 150 to 200 calories.
But when you look at the overall caloric burn throughout the day that you get from resistance training, it just doesn't make sense. Resistance training actually raises your BMR, which is your basal metabolic rate, which is the number of calories required to keep your body functioning at rest. So the more muscle that you have, the more your body needs just to simply function. And for me, I care more about building muscle than getting more miles in on the treadmill. Again, totally dependent from person to person. But I just want you to know that if you are only doing cardio because you think that that is the way to build the body that you want, please hear me when I say there are so many other ways and it's so much more efficient for you to aim at building more muscle than just trying to get those more miles on the treadmill. Number four, I realize that doing only cardio is unbelievably boring for me. Now, this is such an important part of our health and fitness journey, right? You might be someone who loves cardio and that's great. But for me, I personally hated it. I hated forcing myself to do it daily, and I literally dreaded it. Like I knew that if I was going to be at the gym at 4 p.m. every single minute leading up to 4 p.m., I was thinking like how much I didn't want to do it, how much I was going to dread it. And this just led me to being super unhappy in my everyday life, from my day to day interactions at work to my day to day interactions with the people that I love. I couldn't be present because I was constantly thinking about how I was going to dread my workout.
And if that's the way that you feel about your current workouts, please, please, please hear me when I say that you are doing the wrong type of work out for you. I will never say that there is only one workout for every single person because that's just not the case. And we are all at different journeys. We all have different things that bring us joy, that bring us happiness, and that is a huge part of this journey. So never discredit that and never think that it's a bad thing if you're looking at doing some new type of movement or moving, you know, incorporating that into your weekly scheduled simply because it brings you joy. It is so important and it should be working out, should be an enjoyable experience and it should be something that you look forward to daily. Rather than feeling discouraged or dreading it leading up to it. So right now, if you are doing some sort of movement that is just not bringing you joy, I want you to keep searching for the type of movement that you love until you feel that way. Like I mentioned above, like you look forward to it. Now, I can tell you, you know, five, six days a week that I have my workouts and I'm doing my workouts. I look forward to them. They are so exciting. I literally get this like jolt of energy and excitement just because I love what I'm doing. And that is exactly how working out should be. Right. You guys know, if you've listened to me long enough, you know, you've heard the words, honor your body with the movement. You've got to enjoy the process. It is so important that you enjoy the process, right? Movement is a blessing.
It is an opportunity and it is something that we should never take for granted. And I think oftentimes when we go down these routes of getting stuck in these ruts, of doing the same movement that we've done, oh, I've just done this for the last five, six, seven years. So this is the only thing that I can do. No, change it up. Do something different. Even if that's one or two days out of the week, do not feel guilty for that. That is a part of creating a sustainable lifestyle, is finding things that bring you true joy. Because here's the real issue with forcing yourself to do workouts that you hate doing. They aren't going to be effective and they're not going to be effective for two main reasons. Number one, if you hate the form of movement that you're doing, you aren't going to push yourself. You're just going to go through the motions and not progress over time. You need to continue to place new challenges on your body, for your body to continue to change, like lifting heavier weights, doing more reps. And number two, most people run out of the willpower to keep forcing themselves to do the workouts that they hate. If you hate it, you will not be consistent long term. You will not be developing a long term lifestyle with your workouts, and it's not going to be something that you see results from. If you don't love doing it and you continue to do it, trust me when I say you will hit a wall, you will hit a wall, and you will get to a point where you are dreading every single thing and you will run out of the willpower to be in that state long term.
Like I mentioned before, I absolutely love the training that I do now, and it brings me true joy, which is why I know that it is helping aid into creating a sustainable lifestyle for me long term. And that's what I want for you. And lastly, number five, I realize that doing too much cardio was actually hurting me more than helping me. It was not good for my hormones. Something I didn't realize before was that the symptoms like prolonged bloating, fatigue, mood swings and trouble concentrating, which were all things that I was dealing with, was actually connected to my hormone imbalances. And while out of whack, hormones can be caused by many different things, overdoing it with cardio can definitely be one of those things. And so please hear me when I say that more cardio again is not always the answer. For example, I know when we feel bloated, we think we feel fat, and when we feel fat, we think we need to do more cardio. But it could actually be that the cardio itself is causing more bloating. If you actually scaled back on the cardio and focused on lower intensity workouts or you focus on shorter, higher intensity workouts instead of doing these long, steady state cardio, you know, workouts like 45 minutes, an hour or 2 hours, however long you're on there, you actually might see that within a few weeks your chronic bloating will go away. Now, I'm not saying that is for everybody, but I am saying personal experience. That is what happened to me when I scaled back on my cardio and I was actually a lot more intentional with my cardio, like I mentioned before doing hit cardio, high intense interval training. So shorter bursts. So my bursts are like all out for, you know, 30 seconds.
And then I give myself a minute and 30 rest and then I do that, you know, eight, nine, ten times in the 15 minutes that I'm doing that cardio session, I actually found that my chronic bloating, my mood swings, trouble concentrating, all of those things lessened. It was incredible. It's so amazing. And again, just kind of goes back to our biofeedback, like when we change things in our day to day, it's actually amazing to see how our body is so adaptable and our bodies like, Oh, this is what we're doing, okay? And then we start to see changes. So that's just again speaking from my experience. But you might also find that you will have better control over your hunger and you don't feel so hangry all the time. You might also find that you might have better concentration and you just overall feel better. So many women have found that when they cut back on cardio, the symptoms that I mentioned, they start to lessen and lessen over time. And. While I'm not a medical practitioner. I am just speaking from experience. This is both the feedback that I've heard as well as the experience that I have had personally in my journey. Okay, so there you have it. Let me quickly recap those five reasons why I decided to stop doing cardio only workouts. Number one, I realized I didn't need cardio to build the body that I wanted to be my healthiest self. Number two, too much cardio can actually harm you versus help you. Number three, resistance training actually gives me a lot bigger bang for my buck. Number four, cardio is unbelievably boring for me, and that is a key component in movement. Movement should bring you joy. It should not be something that you dread.
And number five, doing too much cardio was actually not good for my hormones. So I hope that this gave you some insight. I hope that this gave you. Just again, speaking from my experience and also speaking to thousands of women on a weekly basis, kind of their experience and how much it has been amazing to see them kind of gain their life back after feeling enslaved to the cardio machine. If you love this episode, I would love to see it on social media. Screenshot it. You can tag me Julia Ledbetter and tag embrace your account on Instagram. We love, love, love connecting with you guys. If you are looking for some resistance training workouts, I've got you girl. It is called the movement with Julie app. I give you five brand new dumbbell only workouts that you can do in the comfort of your own home. You can do them if you prefer doing them at the gym wherever you see fit. Five training workouts are released every single week for you. You can learn more and join by going to sale. That's Sally Dot movement with Julie dot com. I will also link that in the show notes below. If you have a girlfriend or someone in your life that you feel like would really benefit from this episode, I just ask that you share it out with them. You can copy the link and send it to them in a text message. I appreciate you guys so much and I will talk to you and. Episode. All right, sister. That's all I got for you today. But I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you are not already following me on the gram, be sure to do so, Julie.
A lot better. Yes. It's with an eye in the middle for that daily poser about real talk. Healthy tips and tricks and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing be sure to subscribe to Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world and I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember, that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. So go out there and embrace your real because you're worth it.