[kayg04]

- You don't need 1g per pound of body weight. Most of the muscle gain can be had at 0.8g per pound of body weight.

- You can replace sugar with stevia and immediately introduce a calorie deficit.

- Cardio isn't super important if you are already doing Resistance Training. Simply getting around 10k steps per day is more than enough.

[AlexErrant]

Cardio is important to the health of your mitochondria. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8793839/

> Mitochondrial dynamics, including continuous biogenesis, fusion, fission, and autophagy, are crucial to maintain mitochondrial integrity, distribution, size, and function, and play an important role in cardiovascular homeostasis. Cardiovascular health improves with aerobic exercise, a well-recognized non-pharmaceutical intervention for both healthy and ill individuals that reduces overall cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality. Increasing evidence shows that aerobic exercise can effectively regulate the coordinated circulation of mitochondrial dynamics, thus inhibiting CVD development. This review aims to illustrate the benefits of aerobic exercise in prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease by modulating mitochondrial function.

Attia is a fan of "zone 2" training in particular because it trains mitochondria to burn fat, which leads to "metabolic flexibility". https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28467922

> Metabolic flexibility is the ability to respond or adapt to conditional changes in metabolic demand. This broad concept has been propagated to explain insulin resistance and mechanisms governing fuel selection between glucose and fatty acids, highlighting the metabolic inflexibility of obesity and type 2 diabetes. In parallel, contemporary exercise physiology research has helped to identify potential mechanisms underlying altered fuel metabolism in obesity and diabetes.

Weightlifting, if anything, depletes muscle glycogen, a sugar, so you aren't really training your fat-burning.

[gradys]

Cardio isn’t super important for what? It certainly has longevity benefits over and above those from resistance training.

[kayg04]

Sorry, I meant cardio isn't super important for losing weight if you are already resistance training.

[claytongulick]

> Cardio isn't super important if you are already doing Resistance Training.

I'm a bit of a gym rat, mostly lifting though also some bodyweight/calisthenics.

I don't really do cardio.

I was concerned about it, so talked to my doc.

He said "you're lifting for an hour a few times a week. Your heart rate spikes when you're doing heavy lifts, right?"

"Yes".

He replied, "you're fine".

To test the theory, I got into the pool without having done any cardio at all in years. I had no trouble swimming 500 yards straight.

I wouldn't characterize my cardio capability as great, but it's moderate and good enough.

[AlexErrant]

The thing is, you want great cardio capability. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

> Extreme cardiorespiratory fitness (≥2 SDs above the mean for age and sex) was associated with the lowest risk-adjusted all-cause mortality compared with all other performance groups.

Sure your cardio might be "good" now, but see Table 2 for what happens to you over time (with and without training).

Put more plainly https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6153509/

> Individuals with higher cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) showed lower risks of all-cause, CVD and cancer mortality; those with higher grip strength (GS) had lower all-cause mortality. All-cause and CVD mortality risk was lowest in adults with both higher CRF and higher. Improving both CRF and muscle strength, as opposed to either of the two alone, may be the most effective behavioral strategy to reduce all-cause and cardiovascular mortality risk.

[sn9]

Your doc, like most docs, is probably woefully undereducated on the subject. Or at the very least he's so used to the average patient that anything above average is just a relief.

But by not doing cardio, you're actually leaving a lot of low-hanging fruit on the table. The second slide in this video might be persuasive: https://youtu.be/ovM3mD5Roow?si=IRSRjsq8MRas9Yq6

Episodes 236-238 of the Barbell Medicine podcast goes more in depth about the health benefits of endurance training and what a good target is for health benefits.

[throw1234651234]

Is your resting heart rate under 70bpm? Can you run 2 miles in 18 minutes? If not, you could use some cardio. If only so you can breathe when you get COVID.