Fat loss and cardio dont mix

[Jay Farrant]

Yes, I did reduce my calorie intake, because that is the ONLY way to lose weight. I can do High Intensity Exercise all day, until I fall over, and won't lose an ounce of weight, not a gram of fat, unless I reduce my calories as well.

Losing weight requires a caloric deficit. Whether that caloric deficit comes from exercise or diet, or a combination of those two doesn't matter. As long as you are in a caloric deficiency, you will, to a certain degree, lose muscle as well. Resistance training can reduce the amount of muscle lost, but it is near impossible to increase muscle mass while being in a caloric deficit.

What I'm saying is that if you dont build a bigger engine (Muscle mass) ,then long term a calorie deficit diet is not going to work . Long distance cardio doesn't provide a long term solution do weight loss .
Its not impossible to increase muscle mass while in calories deficiency
If you dropped your cals from 4000 a day to 2500 a day your still going to have enough cals to fuel your body and grow reason being the person was eating way to many calories in the first place.......

Yes, muscle burns fat. A minuscule amount more than usual, so little that in the bigger picture, it doesn't make any difference. Unless you bulk up considerably, and I personally have no intentions of looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger at some point. Which would be roughly what you would have to aim for to make the extra energy expended to feed the muscle matter

The More muscle you have the more calories you burn ... No one is saying you have to be like a bodybuilder . Look at the majority of athletes they have good muscle proportion (There not Arnold's ) but yet they have very low body fat levels . Why because the majority of them train with high intensity . Athletes certainly dont restrict there body of calories...

Your BMR is, as you correctly said, the amount of calories your body will burn just by keeping you alive. A lot of things influence your BMR, one of the main factors being your weight. So if you lose weight, your BMR will drop with it. Which means you HAVE to reduce your calories, or up your exercise by a lot.

Yes but if you just loose fat and keep and build muscle then your BMR is likely to increase or stay the same .Your body doesn't use calories to maintain body fat does it ? You use calories for energy (everyday Bodily functions),muscle growth and maintenance .to name a few . ONE THING YOU DONT USE CALORIES FOR THO IS TO KEEP FAT. (Now the lighter you weight then the less calories you will use true ,buts that's also minimal)



The so called 'yo-yo effect' has nothing to do with this at all.

Well the yo yo is the fact that your constantly having to drop your calories
Every Time you stop losing weight ,Then as soon as you eat a higher amount of Cal's you put the weight back on ,hence the yo yo effect . The only time you will stop is when you are happy with your weight . and in my opinion people are always trying to drop down that few extra lbs . hence always dieting.....

I am starting to suspect that you have read this stuff somewhere and liked the sounds of it, but you don't actually understand what you are talking about. A lot of what you wrote above makes that quite obvious.

No This is my opinion no one else's . Minus the article from a fellow work colleague Everything I have wrote ,I have wrote my self .

I will step back from this discussion now, because you are either trolling, or worse, you know a lot less than you think you do, and keep going on about things regardless. In either case, I think our members are intelligent enough to come to their own conclusions.

Stan you have your opinion and I have mine . I Believe long term you better of building a lean athletic body . to opposed to dropping calories and then realising you want to look "ripped" and "toned" . I hope you can understand where Im coming from.....

 

[Jay Farrant]

I don't really want to get into this argument because I am not a fitness expert like say Steve and your whole self proclaimed guru stance is annoying but...

3 1/2 years ago I decided to do cardio but not modify my diet at all and I dropped a dress size in 6 weeks (and I didn't have a huge amount of weight to lose) so I don't believe what you are saying because that it simply not my experience.

However, as I have gotten more into the exercise over the years I have found cleaning up my diet (i.e. healthier food choices), continuing to ignore calories and adding more resistance and intensity has resulted in becoming much leaner and fitter.

EXACACTLY WHAT MOST PEOPLE WANT AS THERE END RESULT TO LOOK LEANER,AND BE FITTER .

But I find it annoying when people come on this site with claims of quick fixes or saying what other people are doing is a waste of time. It is confusing, discouraging and disrespectful of the considerable effort people are putting in to achieve their weight management goals.

There is no quick fix . I never once said quick fix . Its a lot of hard work there is no magic answer .

 

[Spinner19641]

You may not be saying it is a 'quick fix' but you are telling people that cardio is not good for long term weight loss. And by saying that you are telling people who are currently doing cardio they are wasting their time which is not true.

I don't think your advice is worthwhile and I am done with this thread.

 

[Jay Farrant]

You may not be saying it is a 'quick fix' but you are telling people that cardio is not good for long term weight loss. And by saying that you are telling people who are currently doing cardio they are wasting their time which is not true.

I don't think your advice is worthwhile and I am done with this thread.

No I am saying Long distance cardio is not good for weight loss .
At the end of the day cardio is elevation of the heart rate ,a conditioning circuit is cardio, hill sprints is cardio as well as resistance training the same as Interval walking / sprinting. what I'm saying is these form of methods are allot more beneficial to wait loss than running on a treadmill for 40 Min's at a low intensity pace .

 

[Jeanette401]

Rather than labeling types of cardio as 'good' or 'bad' I find it's much more helpful to look at what various types of exercise are good for. For a given period of time, yes, high intensity burns more calories. But if you do high intensity too often, it can lead to injury, whereas you could do low intensity for 5 hours a day if you so desired. Also, the extra calories burned for the next 48 hours from high intensity are pretty minimal.

I recommend reading Lyle McDonald's work for more information on this, however it can be simplified by saying: If you only have an hour to do cardio during the week, the higher intensity you can do, the better off you are. However, if you're doing more than that, then it's certainly reasonable to go for the 'miles build champions' route and just put in the time. 20 hours of liss burns more calories than 1 hour of hit. Of course, if you want you can throw in a few hours of higher intensity work but ... it all depends.

No where does doing low intensity cardio make you gain fat - unless perhaps you decide to reward yourself for your 30 minutes of treadmill with a 2000 calorie dessert. But then, it's not the treadmill, it's you eating more calories that would lead to fat.


References:

 

[Jay Farrant]

Rather than labeling types of cardio as 'good' or 'bad' I find it's much more helpful to look at what various types of exercise are good for. For a given period of time, yes, high intensity burns more calories. But if you do high intensity too often, it can lead to injury, whereas you could do low intensity for 5 hours a day if you so desired. Also, the extra calories burned for the next 48 hours from high intensity are pretty minimal.

Log distance running causes injury . The impact on you knees is very high and most people who do long distance running Often end up with Arthritis . (One of the main causes of arthritis in the knee's is caused from long distance running) . (Thats what I was told on my Specialist Exercise Therapy Course) Sorry but High Intensity Exercise has no more risk of causing injury than any other type of exercise . The FACT is allot of people dont know how to lift weights correctly and perform HIT etc and cause themselves injury in trying to do so . I have never heard of any one getting injured from doing a body weight squat ,push up or running up and down a hill . And I dont know where you go that statement from that the calories burned afterwards is minimal..... lol Maybe if you were doing pointless bicep curls for fat loss then yea . But if you doing Full body conditioning exercises then the calories needed to repair them big muscle afterwards are going to be high ... ( Performing a bicep curl or Tricep Extension is not High Intensity Metabolic training ) A Squat then a chin up into a burpee is HIT.


I recommend reading Lyle McDonald's work for more information on this, however it can be simplified by saying: If you only have an hour to do cardio during the week, the higher intensity you can do, the better off you are. However, if you're doing more than that, then it's certainly reasonable to go for the 'miles build champions' route and just put in the time. 20 hours of liss burns more calories than 1 hour of hit. Of course, if you want you can throw in a few hours of higher intensity work but ... it all depends.

I recommend You look at the athleticbodysystem by Ian Graham .
look at athletes most of go threw there careers performing High Intensity training 5-6 days a week at the highest level and dont get injured , but in contrast look great and have very low body fat .

No where does doing low intensity cardio make you gain fat - unless perhaps you decide to reward yourself for your 30 minutes of treadmill with a 2000 calorie dessert. But then, it's not the treadmill, it's you eating more calories that would lead to fat.

This is debatable and if you were to read the book then you would maybe not have such a one sided opinion . Just think about it .you body loves to store fat . if your using fat all the time as fuel ,when your doing all these long distance runs then you body is going to adapt and store fat to fuel these runs ..... Makes sense when put simple ...

References:

I didn't know you could put links up....
OK Ill try and put references up without links

The following sports use High Intensity training .....

boxers
Soccer
Nfl players
Basketball
Martial arts
Swimmers
Hockey
Tennis
Long jump
Gymnastics
Modelling

I could go on forever all these people train With High Intensity and guess what they are all in great shape and have low body fat . Now look at a Long endurance athlete (marathon runner) compared to a 100m Sprinter .
Type it in to a search engine and see what picture comes up and I bet you would rather look like the 100m High Intensity Sprinter .



I WOULD JUST LIKE TO STATE , I AM NOT AGAINST LONG DISTANCE CARDIO AS I SAID BEFORE I WAS AN ENDURACE ATHLETE FOR 2 YEARS IN THE ARMY. AND APPRECIATE THE TIME AND COMMINTMENT THAT GOES IN ENDURANCE TRAINING .

 

[San2]

I didn't know you could put links up....
OK Ill try and put references up without links

The following sports use High Intensity training ......

If you are an established member of the board, haven't put a spam link into your signature first thing, and actually link to a reputable source, links are not a problem.

And you are still missing the point entirely. We are talking about weight loss here. Not about athletes, people who go from lean to ripped. The focus of this forum is on health and weight loss, not on how to end up being a model athlete.

And you seriously use 'models' as a reference for body composition? Surely, you jest?

You also ignore any intelligent counter-argument to what you said, no matter who it comes from. You're not listening (or rather reading), and basically just keep repeating what you said before.

I shall close this thread now, because the title alone is misleading, and I don't think we will agree, or get any further useful information out of this.