Diet and Exercise Myth #4: You need to do lots of cardio to lose weight

This myth is closely related to Myth #3, which was around the idea that the quantity of the food you eat is much more important for weight loss than the quality of the food.

But this myth is more about the fact that there are two sides to the energy balance equation. And even if you’re burning a lot of calories by doing exercise, it is still surprisingly easy to eat more calories than you’re burning, and negate the exercise altogether.

This is particularly true when you consider that the ‘energy in’ side of the equation is easier to manipulate than the ‘energy out’ side. That is, you get more bang for your buck by controlling the number of calories that you eat than you do trying to increase the number of calories you burn with movement and exercise.

You may have heard the saying that you can’t outrun a poor diet. The idea there is the same, and if you’ve ever done the translation between the number of calories that are in a confectionery bar, to the amount of exercise you’d need to do in order to burn that amount of energy, you’ll know what we’re talking about here.

So be aware that cardio is not the most effective way to lose weight, and even if you are doing lots of cardio, it’s surprisingly easy to over-compensate for that in your diet.