What type of cardio is needed to burn fat?

Why is this?

 

You should maintain a high caloric intake on your off days so you can properly recover and jump back in to it. On the other hand, if you are taking a week off, you should bump it back.

 

Because treadmill running you're not actually moving, it's basically jumping in place. It's not that it's a bad workout, especially for anyone who has been away from running for a long time or who has joint problems, but moving your own body mass is a much better workout. Running outside gets you the same motion as a treadmill plus the effort of keeping your weight moving forward. This isn't to say you should run above any other form of cardio, but running is very important to overall health especially if martial arts are a goal for you.

If running is putting too much stress on your knees distance (4+ miles)walking is, while not as effective, a good alternative.

 

Drop the fat then concentrate on muscle gain. You'll be in a better condition to build muscle with a better hormone profile and nutient partitioning which means out of the weight you gain more will be muscle. Getting lean before you bulk can also help the disillusions about how much of it actually is muscle.

 

This is incorrect. It is true that you are not moving relative to a person standing next to the treadmill, but relative to the treadmill belt you are moving at whatever speed you set it at. If you set it at 12km/hr you are running the same 12km/hr you would be if you were running outside.
To test your theory, try actually jumping on the spot when on a treadmill. I guarantee you cannot do it, you will fall off. You have to push your body forward in relation to the treadmill belt, therefore the same amount of work is being done as pushing yourself against the ground when running outside.

There is also almost no difference in biomechanics of running on a treadmill vs running off a treadmill.

 

That may be, I'm basing everything I've posted here on my own experiences of when I was deployed and only had a treadmill to run on vs when I was redployed and had to run for a virtually identical amount of time but outside on roads/footpaths. Even without a significant change in diet (actually I was eating more since it wasn't chow hall food) and with North Carolina being nowhere near as hot as Iraq, I dropped about five pounds and two and a half minutes from my run time switching from treadmill based running to cross country.

It may be different for others, but that was my experience.

 

Some people absolutely find treadmill running easier than outside running, just not for the reason you've suggested. There's a few reasons why it might be easier:
1) You can more easily set a speed to run at and stay at that speed. This is hard to do outside and most people fluctuate speed making it seem harder and burning more energy.
2) Treadmill running is completely flat (unless you have it set on a grade). Outside, even ground that looks flat is likely to have some kind of grade. A small grade of even 1% can have a big difference on how hard it feels, especially if you're running at or near your anaerobic threshold.
3) Treadmills usually have a slight absorption quality to reduced the impact on the knees which reduces the load on your quads making it feel slightly easier. The opposite can also be true, some treadmills have too much absorption on landing which requires more energy. Kind of like running on sand.
4) Some people do run slightly differently on a treadmill. Their biomechanics changes enough to make running slightly more economical to the tune of about 10% less energy expended for the same distance. Having said that, there are people that find treadmill running harder than running on the ground because their biomechanics changes enough to make it less economical (scientists think it's because of an unconscious fear of falling of the treadmill, haha).

 

I also find I'm more prone to pushing myself to keep going on the treadmill versus running outside. Not sure why.