Even if you’re running or anywhere around Singapore for hours, it still doesn’t mean that you’re doing cardio effectively. You can give your heart a good workout through these exercises, but you might also have mistakes and misconceptions that are hindering your progress. Here are some of those mistakes that’s making your cardio workouts not worth the time and effort.

1. Believing that you can outrun a bad diet

Let me put it to you straight. It’s almost impossible for any person to outrun a bad diet. For example, you decide to eat 2 slices of pizza because you’re going to do cardio later in the day anyway. We can estimate that 2 slices of pizza all in all will be close to 600-650 calories.

The typical cardio session, on the other hand, will have you burn around 300-400 calories. Count them all together and you still have 200 more calories left which will eventually still lead to weight gain. No matter how you put it, weight loss (or even weight gain) will be centered on your diet more than anything. 

2. You do steady-state cardio too much

Running on a treadmill or cycling on a stationary bike are common forms of steady-state cardio. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with doing these from time to time. But only doing steady state cardio won’t give many benefits and will not give you your desired result. This is simply because they are light exercises and don’t challenge your heart as much as other methods.

Instead, you should incorporate a bit of High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). An example of a HIIT workout would be too run full-speed for 30 seconds and then break to a light jog for a minute. The light jog will serve as your rest and after a minute, you go back to that 30-second full-power sprint. This makes HIIT even better than steady-state cardio.

3. Not eating before doing cardio

One of the most detrimental misconceptions about cardio is that you should do it on an empty stomach if you want to maximize your fat loss potential. Any type of cardio exercise will demand a good amount of energy from your body. If you don’t eat, your body will have a difficult time going through the exercise.

By the end, you’ll feel more fatigued and exhausted. And chances are, you’re going to be more hungry so you’ll end up eating a lot after each workout. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you have to eat a lot so that you’ll have a lot of energy as well. Just have a small snack that can boost your energy throughout your workouts.