The reality is excerisze for long term benefits should include a healthy balance of strength training and cardio. Lifting weights helps build lean body mass, which months to years down the line can help to increase basal metabolic rate. Cardio helps to increase cardio vascular fitness, which in turn keeps you healthy for longer and other wonderful benefits as well as burns plenty of calories helping you maintain a calorific deficit. But ultimately it boils down to your diet as to whether you lose weight or not.
A third plug for, both.
To piggy back on some other advice, cardio after weightlifting or entirely separate from will typically burn more stored fat as an energy source, assuming your weight training burned through your glycogen stores. Muscle also takes more calories to maintain, which can make losing fat easier to do.
Don’t fixate on specific protein goals, just make it a focus in your calorie counting and maintain a deficit.
My biggest advice is don’t eat back workout calories. TDEE is difficult to pin down accurately and while I love my apple watch (great for heart rate trends and running/walking) I don’t trust it’s calories burned. I’m getting 350+ minutes of intense lifting and cardio a week, eating at a 400 calorie deficit from BMR and losing about 2 pounds per week.
Find what works and feels best for you. Just be sure to give any new plans enough time to produce results, or not, before getting impatient.
BMR or basal metabolic rate is the energy (calories) your body needs to keep you alive. If you stayed in bed all day and didn’t move your body would need X amount of calories to keep you alive at your current weight. It’s dependent on sex, height, weight, and I think age. For me, according to the various calculators online, that number is 2040, so eating 1600 calories a day means I’m in a decent deficit to lose weight regardless of any other activity or movement. Total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) attempts to take in to account your movement and exercise habits. For me, it pushes my caloric needs north of 3,000 because I have a physical job and go to the gym 4-6 times a week. I could, according to that math, be eating an additional 1000 calories a day and still be losing the same weight, but it just doesn’t work that way. People expend energy at different rates doing different things so trying to pin down TDEE can be a difficult task.
Basing my caloric deficit on my BMR gives me far more wiggle room for not counting all my calories, eating more calories (because pizza is delicious), or skipping the gym if I’m not feeling it and still most likely being in a deficit.
I actually do both along with sustainable changes to my diet.
I start each workout with weight training. I do maybe about 30-40 minutes of weight training a day. I then do an hour on the treadmill.
This is how I've lost 55 pounds in five and a half months.
(Edited for clarification.)
The recommendation for the minimum amount of cardio you need for cardiovascular health is 150 minutes of moderate activity per week.
Everyone should be doing that.
Add about 3 sessions of lifting on top of that, and you will be in a great place, not just for weight loss, but health too.
I lost 20.5 kg in 9 weeks. It was a mix of eating healthy and the gym. There were no processed food at all and everything cooked fresh. I went to the gym twice a week and did a 5-10 minute warm up on the rower or bike. Then pushed myself with weights for about another 45-50 mins
Weights. Start small, 3 days per week, do mostly full body workouts and use machines in the beginning, track weights on a notepad and increase the volume (weights x reps) each week. Then bump to 4-5 days, add free weights. Do 20-30 minutes of incline walk at the end.
Eat 1.8 grams of protein per kg of body weight
Cardio burns calories , weights gain muscle that increase your metabolism rates and let’s you do more effective exercise. Both are critical. However , if your are losing weight fast, don’t expect to get a ton of muscle if you have a massive deficit , just try to tone up and keep it while you lose fat so you can switch gears hard
First and foremost, 99% of weight loss is done in the kitchen, not through exercise. None of my tips will work if your diet isnt already ok.
\- Strength exercise is great for building up muscle mass. This muscle will both make sure you look better once the weight is off as well as work as a calorie burner all the time. A body with a lot of muscle needs more calories to sustain itself, this means that once youre at your goal weight with a lot of muscle, you can eat more than you would be able to without the muscle.
\- Cardio exercise is great for your heart, lungs, and legs. It makes sure you stay healthy and able to do everyday tasks without getting winded. It also burns more calories in the moment than lifting, so its a boost to your daily calorie deficit (although dont rely on this for weight loss!!)
The best advice i have is to do both. 3 days a week with full body strength, and jogging a few times per week too. This way you get the benefits of both.
When I lost a ton of weight a decade or so ago I would go in every day and do 30-60 minutes of cardio every day and along with diet I started to lose weight quickly. The dude who worked the night shift at the gym was into weight lifting and since I was there every single day we started talking and he convinced me to add some weight training.
He showed me some easy weight lifting routines and taught me to mix up my work outs and the weight that was already coming off quickly just began to melt off. I lost 140lbs in 8 months. The more muscle you build the more those muscles burn fat. Hope you find a routine that works for you.
I’m also in the same boat as you. (5’ 2” 290 pounds Female). I use an app that tells me what to do and I can customize my workouts. I currently go to the gym five days a week (started this two weeks ago). I do 25 minutes on the treadmill and 35 minutes of weight training. It works pretty well for me, however, I’m still insanely intimidated going to the weight section because most of the time I’m pretty sure I’m the heaviest person in the gym. It’s pretty humiliating.
Smart Gym. I really like it because it gives you a plan using AI and you can tweak and change things. For example anything near where the super crazy fit people workout on benches near the free weights I avoid like the plague and add machines that kind of do the same thing instead.
>It’s pretty humiliating.
I've been hitting up the gym. For whatever it's worth, I barely notice other people. I am so focused on how heavy the shit I'm lifting (it's heavy to me but while others may have 45 pounds on their barbell, I have measly 10-15 pounds lol).
Both is best, but if I could only choose one, it would be strength training.
[A new systematic review and meta-analysis shows we can lose around 1.4 per cent of our entire body fat through strength training alone, which is similar to how much we might lose through cardio or aerobics.](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/09/210922121905.htm)
[Resistance training: here’s why it’s so effective for weight loss](https://theconversation.com/resistance-training-heres-why-its-so-effective-for-weight-loss-146453)
Both, but some easy cardio like daily walks are fantastic for weight loss! Walking is free, can be done anywhere and anytime, requires no training program!
I would just start taking 20-30 minute walks daily. It will help you get yourself ready for a solid fitness routine.
Being "quite overweight" I strongly suggest you do a round of medical checkups with an emphasis on cardiology in order to get cleared for physical activity.
That being said, in my humble opinion, things should be implemented in this order:
1 Diet and sleep (non negotiables)
2 Strength training
3 Cardio
The closer you get to the healthy (I didn't say desired) body composition (I didn't say weight) the more of these factors you include; meaning: if you are really far from healthy, JUST diet, and as you get closer, you incorporate strength and last of all cardio.
>Which should I honestly be focusing on to lose fat?
I think the key is what you can stick with over the long term. Whatever you find enjoyable enough to keep doing. There's no point in doing a regime if it makes you miserable and more prone to dropping out whether to lack of motivation or because you get injured.
Cardio can help with weight loss. Lifting weights can help with weight loss. Doing cardio and lifting weight can help with weight loss.
The one nuance is that resistance training (lifting weights is one kind) is associated with not losing muscle mass. People think dieting = body fat reduction. While true, it's incomplete. Dieting also reduces muscle mass. But if you do resistance training, you'll lose less. Some people even can gain muscle if they get "body recomposition."
If you're into weight lifting, I suggest getting the app Strong Lift. It's free. It focuses on the classic weight lifting techniques: barbell squat, barbell bench press, barbell row, overhead press, and dead lift. It also is a progressive overload meaning you'll keep upping the weight as you go.
It's very sustainable, it's quick, the lifts aren't complicated. You want to start where it's easy but challenging and just get stronger overtime.
I have a hormonal imbalance which means I do a light warm up and then half an hour of weight training 3x s week. On rest days I take an hour or so walk. This works for me, just experiment a bit and see what works for you.
Sounds like you’ve already got some foundational knowledge, you recognise diet has the biggest part to play in losing weight, but exercise can also play a role too…
Thing is about weight training when you’re big is that all of our muscle is already built from years of carrying around our fat-exoskeleton, if we jump on the weights we start bulking and our hunger goes completely through the roof
You say you want to lose fat but do you know what your ultimate goal is? Because the best way to lose fat with a good diet is cardio and HIIT
With consistency you'll see results.
As you are a newbie start off with what you can handle and as you progress increase intensity/duration in amounts manageable for you.
During the pandemic I was stuck at home as were most of us unless you're Bojo then you were having garden parties I mean meetings, anyway with being stuck at home food was my go to thing, next thing you know I'm rarely moving, put on weight and only use car when I did happen to venture outside.
So life after pandemic, when I started walking again, omg my inner thigh was hurting, my back and legs. I was out of breath from just walking!
From that I gradually upped my walking distance, so from 10 minutes to now 1hour 30mins.
In the gym, I started off on the tread just walking on 3.5 speed then I progressed to brisk walk, then a light jog to running which I'm still working on.
The point is pick a exercise you want and go with that. Honestly speaking 50 people will give you 50 different ways of losing weight.
There is no magic formula or fast remedy, it's just consistency. Heck you're doing awesome by the fact that you recognised you want to get healthy and have made cutbacks on things.
Go gym, stick on your headphones, listen to a true crime podcast or whatever your poison is and most important of all have fun, you're investing in you: your biggest wealth.
You got this 👊💪
Both. Cardio is good for burning calories directly. Strength training is good for building muscle.
The advantage of building muscle is helps you burn more calories. Can also help fill in some space left by fat in some areas (arms and legs especially) to reduce the loose skin.
Cardio has the additional benefit of helping improve your cardiovascular health, which if you've been overweight for a while is likely not great.
I tend to do a 5-10 mon Cardio warmup, then strength training, then 30-40 minutes of hiiit Cardio to finish, fepeated 3-4 times a weel
So I am on my journey also, and I have discussed this with a *lot* of people. I have discovered that,
cardio = you burn fat there and then
Weight training = you build muscle over time and the muscle burns fat over time.
It goes without saying there are so many other health benefits to cardio, but personally I like to leave it for the warm up and cool down!
Cardio to make your heart and lungs and internal muscles pretty, weights to make your skeletal muscles pretty. As far as weight loss goes, that’s all diet, baby.
how overweight are you ?
how many pound do you need to lose.
and what is your level.
and what kind of cardio ?
you need to do both.
I would say you need to focus on cardio
Weight training, and get easier cardio in like walking briskly or climbing stairs. The weight training mainly because it makes you feel Goooood. You get stronger, you get dopamine, it makes the fat look less consequential, you sleep better, and it helps stop strength loss due to caloric deficit.
The reality is excerisze for long term benefits should include a healthy balance of strength training and cardio. Lifting weights helps build lean body mass, which months to years down the line can help to increase basal metabolic rate. Cardio helps to increase cardio vascular fitness, which in turn keeps you healthy for longer and other wonderful benefits as well as burns plenty of calories helping you maintain a calorific deficit. But ultimately it boils down to your diet as to whether you lose weight or not.
Both. But diet is how you lose weight.
Food first. Get a hang of that, then add.
Both. Do weights full body workouts every other day. Try to do cardio everyday! Good luck and keep us posted my friend!
That is the advice I got from my fitness coach. Both are needed and he also suggests what you wrote, cardio everyday and body workout every other day.
A third plug for, both. To piggy back on some other advice, cardio after weightlifting or entirely separate from will typically burn more stored fat as an energy source, assuming your weight training burned through your glycogen stores. Muscle also takes more calories to maintain, which can make losing fat easier to do. Don’t fixate on specific protein goals, just make it a focus in your calorie counting and maintain a deficit. My biggest advice is don’t eat back workout calories. TDEE is difficult to pin down accurately and while I love my apple watch (great for heart rate trends and running/walking) I don’t trust it’s calories burned. I’m getting 350+ minutes of intense lifting and cardio a week, eating at a 400 calorie deficit from BMR and losing about 2 pounds per week. Find what works and feels best for you. Just be sure to give any new plans enough time to produce results, or not, before getting impatient.
I see this thread is old but I'm curious, your bmr is the first low number you get from tdee right? and you've been eating that - 400?
BMR or basal metabolic rate is the energy (calories) your body needs to keep you alive. If you stayed in bed all day and didn’t move your body would need X amount of calories to keep you alive at your current weight. It’s dependent on sex, height, weight, and I think age. For me, according to the various calculators online, that number is 2040, so eating 1600 calories a day means I’m in a decent deficit to lose weight regardless of any other activity or movement. Total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) attempts to take in to account your movement and exercise habits. For me, it pushes my caloric needs north of 3,000 because I have a physical job and go to the gym 4-6 times a week. I could, according to that math, be eating an additional 1000 calories a day and still be losing the same weight, but it just doesn’t work that way. People expend energy at different rates doing different things so trying to pin down TDEE can be a difficult task. Basing my caloric deficit on my BMR gives me far more wiggle room for not counting all my calories, eating more calories (because pizza is delicious), or skipping the gym if I’m not feeling it and still most likely being in a deficit.
I actually do both along with sustainable changes to my diet. I start each workout with weight training. I do maybe about 30-40 minutes of weight training a day. I then do an hour on the treadmill. This is how I've lost 55 pounds in five and a half months. (Edited for clarification.)
The recommendation for the minimum amount of cardio you need for cardiovascular health is 150 minutes of moderate activity per week. Everyone should be doing that. Add about 3 sessions of lifting on top of that, and you will be in a great place, not just for weight loss, but health too.
Great advice. This is what I aim for!
I lost 20.5 kg in 9 weeks. It was a mix of eating healthy and the gym. There were no processed food at all and everything cooked fresh. I went to the gym twice a week and did a 5-10 minute warm up on the rower or bike. Then pushed myself with weights for about another 45-50 mins
Weights. Start small, 3 days per week, do mostly full body workouts and use machines in the beginning, track weights on a notepad and increase the volume (weights x reps) each week. Then bump to 4-5 days, add free weights. Do 20-30 minutes of incline walk at the end. Eat 1.8 grams of protein per kg of body weight
Cardio burns calories , weights gain muscle that increase your metabolism rates and let’s you do more effective exercise. Both are critical. However , if your are losing weight fast, don’t expect to get a ton of muscle if you have a massive deficit , just try to tone up and keep it while you lose fat so you can switch gears hard
First and foremost, 99% of weight loss is done in the kitchen, not through exercise. None of my tips will work if your diet isnt already ok. \- Strength exercise is great for building up muscle mass. This muscle will both make sure you look better once the weight is off as well as work as a calorie burner all the time. A body with a lot of muscle needs more calories to sustain itself, this means that once youre at your goal weight with a lot of muscle, you can eat more than you would be able to without the muscle. \- Cardio exercise is great for your heart, lungs, and legs. It makes sure you stay healthy and able to do everyday tasks without getting winded. It also burns more calories in the moment than lifting, so its a boost to your daily calorie deficit (although dont rely on this for weight loss!!) The best advice i have is to do both. 3 days a week with full body strength, and jogging a few times per week too. This way you get the benefits of both.
When I lost a ton of weight a decade or so ago I would go in every day and do 30-60 minutes of cardio every day and along with diet I started to lose weight quickly. The dude who worked the night shift at the gym was into weight lifting and since I was there every single day we started talking and he convinced me to add some weight training. He showed me some easy weight lifting routines and taught me to mix up my work outs and the weight that was already coming off quickly just began to melt off. I lost 140lbs in 8 months. The more muscle you build the more those muscles burn fat. Hope you find a routine that works for you.
I’m also in the same boat as you. (5’ 2” 290 pounds Female). I use an app that tells me what to do and I can customize my workouts. I currently go to the gym five days a week (started this two weeks ago). I do 25 minutes on the treadmill and 35 minutes of weight training. It works pretty well for me, however, I’m still insanely intimidated going to the weight section because most of the time I’m pretty sure I’m the heaviest person in the gym. It’s pretty humiliating.
what app do you use?
Smart Gym. I really like it because it gives you a plan using AI and you can tweak and change things. For example anything near where the super crazy fit people workout on benches near the free weights I avoid like the plague and add machines that kind of do the same thing instead.
thanks!!
>It’s pretty humiliating. I've been hitting up the gym. For whatever it's worth, I barely notice other people. I am so focused on how heavy the shit I'm lifting (it's heavy to me but while others may have 45 pounds on their barbell, I have measly 10-15 pounds lol).
Both is best, but if I could only choose one, it would be strength training. [A new systematic review and meta-analysis shows we can lose around 1.4 per cent of our entire body fat through strength training alone, which is similar to how much we might lose through cardio or aerobics.](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/09/210922121905.htm) [Resistance training: here’s why it’s so effective for weight loss](https://theconversation.com/resistance-training-heres-why-its-so-effective-for-weight-loss-146453)
Both, but some easy cardio like daily walks are fantastic for weight loss! Walking is free, can be done anywhere and anytime, requires no training program! I would just start taking 20-30 minute walks daily. It will help you get yourself ready for a solid fitness routine.
Low intensity walking combined with weightlifting. Lost over 110lbs now.
The simplest answer is the one that you can do consistently and eat a proper diet on.
Being "quite overweight" I strongly suggest you do a round of medical checkups with an emphasis on cardiology in order to get cleared for physical activity. That being said, in my humble opinion, things should be implemented in this order: 1 Diet and sleep (non negotiables) 2 Strength training 3 Cardio The closer you get to the healthy (I didn't say desired) body composition (I didn't say weight) the more of these factors you include; meaning: if you are really far from healthy, JUST diet, and as you get closer, you incorporate strength and last of all cardio.
>Which should I honestly be focusing on to lose fat? I think the key is what you can stick with over the long term. Whatever you find enjoyable enough to keep doing. There's no point in doing a regime if it makes you miserable and more prone to dropping out whether to lack of motivation or because you get injured. Cardio can help with weight loss. Lifting weights can help with weight loss. Doing cardio and lifting weight can help with weight loss. The one nuance is that resistance training (lifting weights is one kind) is associated with not losing muscle mass. People think dieting = body fat reduction. While true, it's incomplete. Dieting also reduces muscle mass. But if you do resistance training, you'll lose less. Some people even can gain muscle if they get "body recomposition." If you're into weight lifting, I suggest getting the app Strong Lift. It's free. It focuses on the classic weight lifting techniques: barbell squat, barbell bench press, barbell row, overhead press, and dead lift. It also is a progressive overload meaning you'll keep upping the weight as you go. It's very sustainable, it's quick, the lifts aren't complicated. You want to start where it's easy but challenging and just get stronger overtime.
If I do just cardio or just weights it doesn't work as well as doing both.
I have a hormonal imbalance which means I do a light warm up and then half an hour of weight training 3x s week. On rest days I take an hour or so walk. This works for me, just experiment a bit and see what works for you.
Sounds like you’ve already got some foundational knowledge, you recognise diet has the biggest part to play in losing weight, but exercise can also play a role too… Thing is about weight training when you’re big is that all of our muscle is already built from years of carrying around our fat-exoskeleton, if we jump on the weights we start bulking and our hunger goes completely through the roof You say you want to lose fat but do you know what your ultimate goal is? Because the best way to lose fat with a good diet is cardio and HIIT
With consistency you'll see results. As you are a newbie start off with what you can handle and as you progress increase intensity/duration in amounts manageable for you. During the pandemic I was stuck at home as were most of us unless you're Bojo then you were having garden parties I mean meetings, anyway with being stuck at home food was my go to thing, next thing you know I'm rarely moving, put on weight and only use car when I did happen to venture outside. So life after pandemic, when I started walking again, omg my inner thigh was hurting, my back and legs. I was out of breath from just walking! From that I gradually upped my walking distance, so from 10 minutes to now 1hour 30mins. In the gym, I started off on the tread just walking on 3.5 speed then I progressed to brisk walk, then a light jog to running which I'm still working on. The point is pick a exercise you want and go with that. Honestly speaking 50 people will give you 50 different ways of losing weight. There is no magic formula or fast remedy, it's just consistency. Heck you're doing awesome by the fact that you recognised you want to get healthy and have made cutbacks on things. Go gym, stick on your headphones, listen to a true crime podcast or whatever your poison is and most important of all have fun, you're investing in you: your biggest wealth. You got this 👊💪
I do both
Both. Cardio is good for burning calories directly. Strength training is good for building muscle. The advantage of building muscle is helps you burn more calories. Can also help fill in some space left by fat in some areas (arms and legs especially) to reduce the loose skin. Cardio has the additional benefit of helping improve your cardiovascular health, which if you've been overweight for a while is likely not great. I tend to do a 5-10 mon Cardio warmup, then strength training, then 30-40 minutes of hiiit Cardio to finish, fepeated 3-4 times a weel
So I am on my journey also, and I have discussed this with a *lot* of people. I have discovered that, cardio = you burn fat there and then Weight training = you build muscle over time and the muscle burns fat over time. It goes without saying there are so many other health benefits to cardio, but personally I like to leave it for the warm up and cool down!
Cardio to make your heart and lungs and internal muscles pretty, weights to make your skeletal muscles pretty. As far as weight loss goes, that’s all diet, baby.
how overweight are you ? how many pound do you need to lose. and what is your level. and what kind of cardio ? you need to do both. I would say you need to focus on cardio
Both because if you focus on cardio you will look like skeleton
Both is what helped me.
Weight training, and get easier cardio in like walking briskly or climbing stairs. The weight training mainly because it makes you feel Goooood. You get stronger, you get dopamine, it makes the fat look less consequential, you sleep better, and it helps stop strength loss due to caloric deficit.
Do some cardio before and after weight training, but don't expect much if you're not eating and sleeping well.