The first idea related to weight loss is to start going to the gym and the next thought is to start with cardio. Cardio is short for cardiovascular activities - activities that raise your heartbeat such as running, skipping, cycling etc.

Cardio is one of the best workouts for your weight loss and aims at overall cardiovascular health. It also helps increase your lung capacity. Cardio helps burn tons of calories and also releases your feel good endorphins. But with these amazing benefits, cardio has also been associated with numerous senseless myths. Here is a list of the myths related to cardio.

Weight loss can not just depend on cardio, it requires a proper balance of cardio, strength training and diet. A perfectly regulated diet is important because without proper diet neither strength training nor cardio is going to help. Strength training is necessary because if you do cardio, it would lead to weight loss, but that is the wrong kind of weight. Strength training helps build lean muscle and speeds up the process of weight loss.

Another famous cardio myth is that fasted cardio is best. When we perform any cardiovascular activity, our body taps into food that we have consumed to obtain energy. Suppose you have not consumed anything before cardio, your body will start tapping into stored reserves for energy. This leads to muscle and also affects your overall performance.

All your body's movements result in a caloric burn, whether you jog for 1 hour or run for 20 minutes, you will surely burn calories. High-intensity short workouts are being favoured nowadays, therefore, thinking that if you won't do cardio for an hour, it will be useless is a complete lie. We hope after reading this you would stop giving excuses of not having enough time to do cardio.

Cardio is an entirely different thing when compared to strength training. People often believe cardio is similar to leg workout, which is not true. When we perform our leg workout we strain numerous leg muscles to lift heavyweights. It results in strengthening of muscles, while cardio trains leg muscles for a different type of strain.

There is no specific order to when you should do your cardio. Strength training helps burn more calories than cardio. So ideally you should first do strength training as you have more energy initially and is better to spend your energy on the workout that will help in burning more calories. Regardless you can follow any order according to your preference, but remember there is no hard and fast rule to do cardio first.

This is one of the silliest myths, actually, it is more of an excuse which has now turned into a myth. Any activity in which your heart rate goes up is cardio. You can incorporate exercises such as jump squats, burpees, jumping lunges, mountain climbers, and more in your cardio routine. None of these exercises requires a gym. All we want to tell you is cardio can be done anywhere, not being able to attend the gym should never be a reason to not do cardio.

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Weight Loss: Most common myths about cardio exercise that you must not believe - Times of India