Book: Kiss Cardio Goodbye, and Lose Weight

April 16, 2007 — -- Jim Karas is a New York Times bestselling author and weight loss expert. In "The Cardio-Free Diet," Karas shares why, according to him, cardiovascular exercise alone won't help you lose weight and keep it off. He says that instead of spending an hour running on a treadmill five times a week, you should learn how to perform strength training exercises for twenty minutes a day, three times a week. The following is an excerpt.

Are you interested in losing weight, keeping it off and completely changing your body shape to the astonishment of all your friends? What if I told you this goal is best accomplished without ever stepping on a treadmill or elliptical machine again?

I know you are skeptical, but let me ask you something. Have you, like millions of Americans, spent hours and hours per week on the treadmill trying to lose weight? What about the elliptical trainer, bike, stair stepper, or versa climber? If so, have you dropped any pounds and kept them off? No? Well, what about spinning? Cross country skiing? Tae Bo? How about those nice long walks in the spring and summer? Did they help keep the pounds off? No, but they sure were pretty, weren't they?

Aerobics class? Stepping? Hiking? Swimming? No.

Snow shoeing? Rowing? Salsa Dancing. Sweating to the Oldies? Oh please, NO!

The reason is both shocking and completely true: cardiovascular exercise alone won't help you lose the weight and keep it off. "What?" you're probably saying, "I've been told thousands of times that cardiovascular exercise is the key to weight loss!" That's what we were all told. But that was simply the wrong advice.

I ask people all the time, "How are you exercising to lose weight?" Most answer, "cardio." I ask them, "Is it working?" They say, "Well, no, but I just need to do it more often and for a longer period of time." If something isn't working, you are going to do more of it? You keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result? Albert Einstein had a name for this type of logic: insanity.

Cardio is mindless. You hop on the treadmill, jump on the bike, or step on the elliptical trainer, turn on the TV or pop in the earphones of your iPod, flip through your favorite magazines, and off you go...to nowhere fast. What are you accomplishing? Absolutely nothing, except a Zen-like trance, during which you should meditate on the following mantra:

Mindless Exercise Yields Forgettable Results

For more than 20 years as a weight loss and fitness professional, I have been working with clients one-on-one and have been leading, teaching, and training a team of the best and the brightest physical trainers in New York and Chicago. We've been in the field, identifying cutting edge research, testing it, and then bringing the best of the best information and instruction to our clients. After 20 years of experience, I am convinced that cardio kills. It kills your weight loss plan, your joints, your internal organs and immune system, your body composition, your time and, most of all, your motivation to stay committed to losing weight. But there is one thing that cardio doesn't kill: your appetite. The more cardio you do, the hungrier you get. You burn a few measly calories, then you eat twice as many afterward. The result? Weight gain, and lots of it.

Cardio is the channel surfing solution of exercise.

It's mindless and, as you have experienced, result-less.

So if cardio kills, what works?

Well, you could ask Diane Sawyer, Hugh Jackman, or Oprah's best pal Gayle King -- though it's tough getting their cell phone numbers. I have them because I helped all three get in the best shape of their lives. We did it within their very busy, demanding schedules -- and trust me, I know your life is just as hectic.

In the next 12 chapters, I will explain to you in detail what to do instead of cardio to get in the best shape of your life in only 8 weeks. Now, to be perfectly clear, exercise is essential to weight loss. Without it, you are doomed to fail. Don't think you are getting off the hook by going cardio-free. You will exercise, but you will do the right kind of exercise to see and feel amazing results -- in an amount of time anyone can commit to. By the end of the eighth week, you won't believe the difference, and neither will your friends! I will also teach you the right way to eat to complement your new exercise program, so you'll lose the weight and keep it off, once and for all. When you are finished with this book, you will understand exactly what to do to look the way you've always wanted and why that means never setting foot on an elliptical machine or treadmill again to lose weight! Mind-blowing, isn't it?

In 1977, Jim Fixx published his first book, The Complete Book of Running. It sold more than a million copies, and at the time it was the best-selling nonfiction book ever published. With that one book, the whole cardio craze was unleashed. Since then, we have heard from hundreds, if not thousands, of doctors, exercise physiologists, and fitness experts go on and on about all the benefits of cardiovascular exercise.

In 1981, I was living in London and was about to turn 21. Determined to drop some weight (I just couldn't face that milestone birthday feeling so out of shape), I took up running. I was 20 pounds overweight and trying to quit smoking for the 53rd time, so I used the running to offset the extra calories I feared I would be consuming when a cigarette wasn't in my mouth. I didn't gain any more weight, but I didn't lose any, either. For months, I was running everyday for an hour to an hour and a half, for a total of about 10 hours per week and didn't lose an ounce. If you eat, eat, eat and run, run, run (or perform any form of cardio) as I did, at the end of the day, you won't lose any weight. Learn from my mistake, and don't blow ten hours a week exercising for nothing.

As running became more popular, high-impact aerobics was also hitting the scene. To relieve some stress and try to get rid of the extra pounds (since the running didn't work), I took up high-impact aerobics, still convinced that cardio was the key to weight loss. One Saturday, the teacher did not show up for the 8:00AM, high impact aerobics class. About 100 of us, mostly overweight regulars, stood around for 15 minutes until I said, "if someone can find a tape, I'll teach." I had the routine memorized, which is never a good thing as you will learn later, so up I went to teach the 8:00 AM class. Since the teacher didn't show up for the 9:00 AM class either, I taught that one as well.