Courtney touched on the idea that cardio is the be all end all of weight loss. Truth? It's not. "Weight training and resistance training can serve just as effective as cardio in losing weight," she said. "When it comes down to losing weight, all it means is you need to burn more calories than you are eating. Intense weight training sessions and healthy eating can help you hit your goals." Note: strength training builds muscle, and the more muscle you have, the more calories you will burn at rest.
That being said, you shouldn't just strength train, but you also shouldn't just do cardio. NASM-certified personal trainer Allison Tibbs explained that it's a multi-pronged approach. Cardio, she said, "isn't the saviour of fitness," though it will help your cardiovascular health, which is important, and it will burn calories. At the same time, the value of strength training for weight loss has sometimes been overlooked, she said. And, it's also about playing around with different types of cardio like high-intensity interval training (HIIT).
As exercise physiologist at NYU Langone's Sports Performance Centre Rondel King, MS, CSCS, CES told POPSUGAR in a previous interview, "Having the cardio would definitely increase your cardiorespiratory fitness, and it'd just make you more functional in general." Resistance training "would give you more muscle mass, and as a result, you will boost your metabolism and your resting energy expenditure." Of course, everyone's bodies are different and there's no holy grail of weight loss that you necessarily have to stick to, but at the end of the day, you can't just run on the treadmill for 45 minutes a few times a week and expect to see continued results.