Cardio vs Strength Training for Fat Loss: Which Wins?

For fat loss, cardio burns more calories per session: a 155-lb (70 kg) person burns about 343 calories running at 6 mph for 30 minutes and about 221 in 30 minutes of vigorous weightlifting. Strength training's job is different. It keeps the muscle you'd otherwise lose while dieting, and trials show that doing both gives the best body composition.

Neither one works without a calorie deficit. Exercise shapes what you lose; food mostly decides how much.

Key takeaways

• Per workout, cardio wins: running, cycling and HIIT burn 1.3-1.8 times what vigorous lifting does in the same 30 minutes.
• The afterburn is small. Post-workout burn is only 6-15% of the workout's own cost, so it doesn't make lifting the bigger calorie burner.
• Lifting protects muscle. In dieting older adults, lean mass fell 5% with cardio only versus 2-3% when lifting was included.
• Best plan: 3 strength sessions, 2-3 cardio sessions and daily walking, in a moderate deficit with enough protein.

Calories burned: cardio vs strength training

These numbers come from the 2024 Compendium of Physical Activities, using calories = MET x 3.5 x body weight in kg / 200 x minutes. They include the calories you'd burn at rest anyway.

Typical gym lifting, with rest between sets, sits at the low end of this table. Circuits with short rests close much of the gap with cardio, and hard intervals beat steady running, though few people can sustain them for 30 minutes.

For your own numbers, use the calories burned calculator. For more detail on specific cardio, see our guides to running calories and cycling calories.

Does strength training burn more calories after the workout?

After any hard workout your body keeps using extra oxygen for a while. This is called EPOC, or the "afterburn". It's real, but it's small.

A review of the research by LaForgia and colleagues (2006) found that even after long or very intense sessions, EPOC adds only 6-15% of the workout's own net energy cost. A workout that burned 300 calories above rest might add another 18-45 afterward. The same review concluded that the old optimism about EPOC as a weight-loss tool is "generally unfounded". Most of those measurements come from cardio; the review notes that data for resistance exercise are still limited, but no study it covered points to a large afterburn from lifting.

Claims that lifting keeps your metabolism high for 24-48 hours and burns hundreds of extra calories don't match the measurements. Count the workout itself, not the afterburn.

Which loses more fat? What the trials found

Three pieces of evidence give a fairly clear picture.

STRRIDE AT/RT: 8 months, aerobic vs resistance vs both

Duke researchers randomized 119 sedentary adults with overweight or obesity to aerobic training, resistance training, or both, for 8 months (Willis and colleagues, 2012).

• The aerobic and combined groups lost more body weight and more fat mass than the resistance-only group.
• The resistance and combined groups gained more lean mass than the aerobic group.
• The combined program took twice the time and did not lose significantly more fat than aerobic alone.

Dieting older adults: lifting saved muscle

In a 6-month trial of 160 older adults with obesity, all on the same diet, every exercise group lost about 9% of body weight (Villareal and colleagues, 2017). The difference was in what they lost:

The guideline view

The American College of Sports Medicine's position stand (Donnelly and colleagues, 2009) says 150-250 minutes a week of moderate activity gives only modest weight loss on its own, while more than 250 minutes is linked with clinically meaningful loss. It adds that resistance training "does not enhance weight loss" but may increase fat-free mass and fat loss.

Put together: cardio moves the scale more, lifting changes what the scale is made of, and the combination gives you the most fat lost relative to muscle.

Why muscle matters in a calorie deficit

When you eat less, you lose some muscle along with fat. A systematic review of 52 studies in middle-aged and older adults found that 81% of diet-only groups lost at least 15% of their weight as fat-free mass, compared with 39% of groups that dieted and exercised (Weinheimer and colleagues, 2010).

Keeping muscle matters for strength, for how you look at a given weight, and a little for metabolism. Muscle burns about 13 calories per kg per day at rest (about 6 per lb), against about 4.5 per kg for fat (Wang and colleagues, 2010). That's a modest effect: 4 lb of extra muscle adds roughly 24 calories a day. Lifting doesn't "boost metabolism" much, but it keeps you from losing the muscle you have.

If you want to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, our body recomposition guide covers how.

Is cardio or strength training healthier?

Neither replaces the other. The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommend, for adults:

• 150-300 minutes a week of moderate aerobic activity, or 75-150 minutes of vigorous activity, and
• muscle-strengthening activity for all major muscle groups on 2 or more days a week.

Cardio does more for heart and lung fitness. In the Villareal trial, peak oxygen uptake rose 17-18% in the groups that did aerobic work and 8% with resistance only, while strength rose 18-19% in the groups that lifted and 4% with aerobic only.

Should you do cardio or weights first?

If muscle and strength are your priority, lift first, or do cardio on a different day. A meta-analysis of 21 studies (Wilson and colleagues, 2012) found that adding endurance training to lifting reduced strength and muscle gains compared with lifting alone. The interference came mainly from running, not cycling, and grew with longer and more frequent cardio sessions.

If your goal is mostly general fitness or fat loss, the order matters less than doing both consistently. Walking, cycling and short sessions interfere the least.

A weekly plan that combines both

This plan meets the guidelines and gives lifting enough recovery. Start lighter if you're new to training.

That's about 3 strength sessions and 95-130 minutes of planned cardio. Daily walking on top of that pushes you past the 150-minute mark and toward the 250+ minutes linked with more weight loss. For step targets, see walking for weight loss.

Use progressive overload in the strength sessions: add a little weight or a rep or two each week. Compound lifts like squats, deadlifts, presses and rows train the most muscle per minute.

If you have a heart condition, joint problems or haven't exercised in a long time, talk to your doctor before starting a new training plan.

What matters most: the deficit and protein

Fat loss needs a calorie deficit. No mix of cardio and lifting beats eating at maintenance. Exercise helps by adding to the deficit and protecting muscle, but a 300-calorie run is easy to undo with one snack.

• Set a moderate deficit. Estimate your needs with the TDEE calculator, then pick a target with the calorie deficit calculator.
• Eat enough protein. A meta-analysis of 49 trials found muscle gains from lifting topped out at about 1.6 g of protein per kg of body weight per day (about 0.73 g per lb) (Morton and colleagues, 2018). The protein calculator gives you a daily number.
• Track your food. Logging what you eat shows whether your deficit is real. Nutrify logs meals from a photo, so it takes seconds after each meal.

If you're wondering how long visible changes take, our belly fat timeline sets realistic expectations.

Sources

• 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities: Conditioning exercise (codes 02040, 02050, 02052, 02054, 02214), Running (12050), Bicycling (01030), Walking (17200). Herrmann SD, et al. J Sport Health Sci, 2024.
• LaForgia J, Withers RT, Gore CJ. Effects of exercise intensity and duration on the excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. J Sports Sci, 2006.
• Willis LH, et al. Effects of aerobic and/or resistance training on body mass and fat mass in overweight or obese adults. J Appl Physiol, 2012.
• Villareal DT, et al. Aerobic or resistance exercise, or both, in dieting obese older adults. N Engl J Med, 2017.
• Donnelly JE, et al. ACSM position stand: appropriate physical activity intervention strategies for weight loss and prevention of weight regain for adults. Med Sci Sports Exerc, 2009.
• Weinheimer EM, Sands LP, Campbell WW. A systematic review of the separate and combined effects of energy restriction and exercise on fat-free mass in middle-aged and older adults. Nutr Rev, 2010.
• Wang Z, et al. Specific metabolic rates of major organs and tissues across adulthood. Am J Clin Nutr, 2010.
• Wilson JM, et al. Concurrent training: a meta-analysis examining interference of aerobic and resistance exercises. J Strength Cond Res, 2012.
• Morton RW, et al. A systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression of the effect of protein supplementation on resistance training-induced gains in muscle mass and strength. Br J Sports Med, 2018.
• Vispute SS, et al. The effect of abdominal exercise on abdominal fat. J Strength Cond Res, 2011.
• US Department of Health and Human Services. Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, 2nd edition, 2018.