7 Cardio Exercise Tips That Helps Weight Loss Transformation

Your cardio exercise should burn fat, improve heart health, save muscle mass and help you with lasting weight loss transformation. There are many ways to do cardio but keep these four goals in mind.


Boredom is built into cardio exercise because of the repetition. You can avoid the boredom by changing up your routines and keeping the sessions short.

Use cardio as a major fat and calorie burner. It does NOT require long cardio sessions to burn major calories. Too many long (such as 45-60 minutes) cardio sessions will waste away your muscle mass.

Here’s what the research says:

a) Doing these types of short burst workouts will change your hormones allowing your body to naturally regulate fat burning, appetite and moods.

Short burst workouts, such as interval cardio and circuit bodyweight training had these advantages over the low-to-moderate intensity workouts:


  • more release of fat from cells, 
  • more fat used as fuel during exercise and
  •  increased metabolic rate after exercise. All it takes is 20-30 minutes of workout time.

b) Doing this type of exercise will burn more calories and fat during and after your workout. Exercise Post-Oxygen Consumption (EPOC) causes your body to burn more calories and fat after a tough workout.

Your body has to work harder to get back to its pre-exercise state. Fat burning and metabolism can increase for up to 48 hours after your metabolic workout!

Here are 7 cardio exercise tips to help weight loss transformation:

1.  Bodyweight Cardio.  If you want to take your cardio workouts to a highest level and blowtorch body fat, bodyweight cardio workouts are what you need. The dual strength/cardio benefits give you maximum results in the minimum of time.

2. Traditional long, slow lower-intensity aerobic exercise on treadmills, bikes, ellipticals, etc. is good for beginners or those who have been inactive.  Speed walk cardio is a great alternative too.

3. Research has proven that the benefits of anaerobic exercise (like sprint interval cardio) is superior to aerobic exercise for fitness and heart health. The progression of your cardio exercise should be low-intensity aerobics to moderate/high-intensity aerobics to high-intensity anaerobic exercise.

4. High intensity cardio (HIC) and high intensity interval cardio training(HIIT) will give you faster body fat burn in less time. You only need to do 20 minutes per session, 2-3 times a week.

5. High intensity cardio (HIC) and high intensity interval cardio training (HIIT) will:

 a) significantly boost your metabolism--during and after exercise,
 b) give you less lean body mass loss,
 c) give you a faster rate of body fat-to-energy conversion and
 d) significantly increase your VO2 Max capacity.

6. Circuit strength training (including bodyweight circuits) has dual benefits as a strength/cardio workout.

7. If HIC or HIIT is too hard on your body, you might want to try a HIC, HIIT and moderate intensity combination during the week. Just get to know your body so you know when to back off.

The evidence is clear----if you want maximum body fat burn in the least amount of time, then HIC and HIIT is the way to go using bodyweight cardio. I personally do 2 days of HIIT (bodyweight cardio) and 2 days of circuit strength training per week. I know it works.

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About Mark

Hi, I'm Mark Dilworth, Nutritionist, Dietary Strategies Specialist, Nutrition for Metabolic Health Specialist and Lifestyle Weight Management Specialist. Since 2006, I have helped thousands of clients and readers make lifestyle habit changes which includes body transformation and ideal body weight.