^ Strong bump, dude (everyone seemed to be saying "dude" in this thread 84 years ago, thought I'd join in while it's still hip and cool).
Anyway, here's why strength training trumps cardio for FAT loss (not necessarily weight loss).
- Back when this thread was alive, everyone KNEW that every time you touch a barbell your metabolism shoots up by about 1,000,000kcal/day. In more recent times, the enhanced metabolism claims have been backed off and calmed down to more realistic claims, but the science still stands (last I checked) on the basic principle that muscle mass fuels metabolism and recovery from strength training is metabolically demanding, so at the very least doing stuff to actively build (or at least preserve) muscle mass should minimise any decreases in metabolic rate due to weight loss.
- More importantly, and much more directly significant, once you've made your calorie deficit, it's been made. You WILL lose weight. Your body may adjust later on by reducing your metabolic rate, but so long as there is a calorie deficit, weight loss MUST occur. So, what becomes significant thereafter in the numbers is where the weight's coming from. Strength training preserves lean body mass. Calorie-dense body mass is either lean or fat in nature, so if you lose weight and it ISN'T lean body mass, where's it gonna come from? Conversely, cardio does very little to preserve lean body mass, so the weight loss might be 50/50 fat and muscle, vs 95/5 fat and muscle with strength training.
In any case, I don't get the impression that the people who did reply to this thread back in Nam were posting anti-cardio, per se. They were, however, posting against having cardio as the number 1 form of exercise that everything hinges on. If you had to choose between strength training and cardio, assuming that you're an able-bodied person who can do both properly, you'd logically want to choose strength training, even for fat loss. Cardio works well in supplementing strength training, and has some obvious health benefits, so ideally everyone should do both, but strength training is more important.