My opinion on cardiovascular exercise has changed drastically in the years since I’ve become involved in fitness. For those of you familiar with my backstory, I was once the queen of all cardio bunnies – I was the Queen B, y’all! Starting in middle school, I was regularly running for an hour followed immediately with two hours of swimming almost everyday. I was burning through 15 miles a day either on the treadmill or outdoors by the time I hit high school. While I initially did it because I wanted to be a faster runner, my goals quickly deteriorated into “do it for the calorie burn, baby!”, all the while not seeing any visible changes in my physique.

For some of you, your beliefs on cardio to sculpt a rockin’ bod will be different from mine. Many of you think that you need to do 45 minutes of cardio day in and day out in order to be lean. A lot of you probably have once said something along the lines of, “Oh my God, that ice cream was so good; now it’s time to go run it off,” or, “I totally deserve that cream cheese bagel after biking for 30 minutes.” Cool story, brah. How’s that working out for you?

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