17/09/2021
Food for thought 😆 from The Godfather of fitness Alwyn Cosgrove… there are a thousand ways to skin a cat and a thousand ways to drop that added covid lockdown weight.. of you have not read his work, you should!
Q: Assuming both are doing a solid resistance training program and eating correctly -- when in a fat loss phase, do females need more cardio than males?
A: Based in gender, no - but in reality - yes sometimes
It's because generally, females tend to be lighter than males and carry less muscle mass and therefore need to consume less overall calories-- not because of gender differences
So it's not a need for more "cardio" per se -- more a need for additional energy expenditure
E.g.:
Client A: 200 lbs male. Let’s say maintenance calories are (e.g. BW x 12) = 2400.
Client B: 140 lbs female. Maintenance is (e.g. BW x 10 – lower multiplier for females) = 1400
And we're looking to cut 10lbs of fat from both
A typical guideline is to start with a 500 cal deficit or 20% of maintenance - whatever is smaller, and work from there
If we cut Client A's caloric intake by 20% - we get 1920 calories per day (and 480 cals of deficit). That's pretty do-able. And when we add in the additional calories burned from his current training program - we will have him reach his goal in about 8-10 weeks at the most
But if we take our female client down 500 calories -- that would take us to an intake of 900 calories -- that's extremely low. And it would be really tough to recover from your training programs with that low of an intake
So it's easier to cut calories by 20% to around 1120 (still extremely low)
However - now we're looking at a 280 calorie deficit. That means we're looking at about 16-18 weeks to get the same result
We can accelerate the fat loss though, and reach our goal faster by including additional "cardio", maybe 10 mins at the end of each weight training session, or even just some low intensity "non exercise physical activity" or NEAT e.g. going for a walk every day to increase the total calories burned
Now granted, this would be the same if we were talking about a lighter male. Calorie targets are more about starting bodyweight and activity level than purely about gender
So, while there’s no need to add additional cardio to a fat loss program purely because your client is female, it can be a useful strategy
