Strength or Cardio?

What is better for fat loss - strength training or cardio?

I get asked this all the time. Firstly, remember that fat loss is ultimately about the overall volume of calories you consume (food, drink) versus the volume of calories you expend (breathing, exercising, moving around). But in terms of exercise, my answer would be strength training.

Cardio of course has excellent benefits - it strengthens the heart and lungs and is great for brain health as well as improving your overall mood. But in a straight comparison reducing body fat can be achieved quicker by putting on muscle as opposed to raising your heart rate and lying in pools of sweat.

Structured strength training that incorporates progressive overload (increasing repetitions, sets and weights over time), sends signals to your body’s central nervous system that it needs to grow and get stronger in order accommodate the higher demand, which in turn activates muscle growth.

Muscle is the most metabolically active tissue found the body. This means it requires more energy to keep it, which means it burns more calories at rest. This in turn means that you will burn substantially more calories overall, over a span of months versus trying to burn calories during 2-3 cardio sessions per week.

Of course, if you want to have an optimally balanced healthy lifestyle then ideally you would do a couple of strength-based sessions per week, as well as some cardio AND eat healthily (remember, calories in versus calories out!)
And if you are time pressured, then a composite session of strength & cardio can also help you get there (sometimes referred to as metabolic conditioning or ‘metcon’ training.