How much cardio do I need?

[WinterBreeze]

I'm new here.

Female, 209lbs (cringe) and aiming to get to about 140 (I'm 5ft 8 inches.) I've been healthy eating and exercising for ten months and have lost 3 stone so far. I would like to blitz the final 4 stone this year.

My weight loss has seemed really slow lately - often only a 1lb if I’m lucky and very often I seem to be STS or even gaining. I’m on Slimming World (not sure whether that is known internationally) so I don’t have to count calories per say, but I’m still careful not to “stuff” myself - even with all the lovely “free” foods. When I started and got back into it after Christmas, I was losing 2-3lb most weeks, which I was thrilled with. However, it’s really slowed lately. The main problem I seem to be having is that I’ve been really inconsistent with my cardio, purely because I set myself really high standards. In an entire week, I will say “I’ll do 2 hours of exercise a day.” I sometimes achieve this perhaps once or twice in a week - and the rest of the time it’s only half an hour or an hour maximum (especially in the last couple of weeks.) I’m just finding the two hours really quite difficult and seem to be failing because of it.

I’ve thought about swapping this to a slightly different regime, such as:

1 hour cardio
15 minutes weights
10 minutes sit ups/ push ups/ crunches etc.

I think this would be a more achievable routine for me. However, I’m worried about not losing weight on it. Ideally, I’d like to shoot for an average of 2lb a week, but I’m really struggling to reach that target now.

When I do cardio I try and work at a fairly fast pace - but I am still recovering from a long-term illness (have been recovering about 9 months now and still not out of the woods yet,) so I can’t go all-out like a totally healthy person would. I tend to work at an average of 65-75% of my MHR and peak at around 85%.

What do you think? Would an hour of fairly intense 75% + cardio do the job better than what I’m currently doing? I’m willing to try whatever is necessary to get this weight shifting again. I seem to have reached a bit of a plateau - I’m still losing, but not very much and very irregularly. Five weeks will go like: wk 1 -2, wk2 -0.5, wk3 STS, Wk4 +1, Wk5 - STS. That kind of thing.

Any advice is appreciated.

 

[Sole]

Hi there,
Congrats on your success so far.

I'm pretty new to this myself, there are plenty of others here that will be able to give you better and more info, but heres something you can start looking into.

HiiT--High Intensity Interval Training.
This way you wont have to do an hour's cardio, you can half that at least.
Read this:HITT explained - WorldFitness Training Forum

Stick to the weights.. muscle burns fat.

Sorry i carnt explain better, but i really suck at typing stuff out like this.

Best of luck!!

Sole.

 

[Harold14370]

I'm not familiar with Slimming World and don't know what the "free" foods are, but I'd say it's not working for you if you have to run yourself ragged trying to burn off the excess calories you are eating.

My advice ... count the calories.

 

[Racer_X]

This was a great post, but Kara never got to read it. Wishing the best to all, good luck!

 

[WinterBreeze]

Thanks for the advice.

Sole - thanks for the link. I have tried a modified version of HIIT in the past. However, due to my health problems I don't like to let my HR go to much beyond 80-85% of my MHR. But I will definitely look into this.

Harold14370- I imagine that Slimming World isn't used outside of the UK. It is a very successful system in the UK mind you - it's based around food density rather than calories. From what I can see, I'm eating less, more healthy food on SW than I was when calorie counting.

Racer_X - thank you for the in-depth explanation. Even though SW doesn't require me to calculate calories, I might average them out for the day/week and see if I am eating the correct amount to lose.

I think my main problem is that my exercise is unrealistic - so I'm setting myself a huge target everyday, and then feel so overwhelmed that I do none or very little. I'm going to try 1 hour a day of full-on, fairly intense cardio. It feels more achievable for me.

 

[Micah55]

Hi WinterBreeze

Hi WinterBreez!

Congrats on your weight loss I love hearing about people taking action and getting results. Here is my suggestion to loose body fat instead of getting back on the treadmill “one more time,” try this: Alter your diet so that you eat no grain-based carbohydrate: no flour, no sugar, no bread, no pasta, and no high fructose corn syrup. Then go to the gym and perform a workout of leg press, pulldown, chest press, row and overhead press. Lift slowly and smoothly but with as much effort as possible. Go to complete fatigue, or as close to it as you can tolerate. Work out once, or at most, twice a week. Make sure your workouts last no longer than 20 minutes. Then sit back and watch what happens.

EDIT: nope, can't do that

Talk Soon!
Micah
LINK REMOVED

 

[Lizabell1]

Everyone has hit a plateau here and there and I agree with you that that is probably where you're at right now. It just means that your body has finally caught up to your plan of losing weight and has adjusted itself to efficiently stop letting you lose weight at your current routine. You need to switch things up a bit.

What's been recommended by all so far (aside from Micah's post) should be a part of your plan. Yes, count calories. Yes, weights. Yes, exercise in general.

Calorie counting in its basic form is usually very tedious for many people since they're not already used to doing it. That said, it's not impossible to become very good at it, especially once you become more accustomed to eyeballing the calorie count of a particular foods (for instance, you could easily estimate the portion size and calorie content of chicken, etc) that make up a good part of your diet. Most often, since you'd be eliminating tons of food items from your diet when you're eating a healthy lifestyle, it gets easier to know the calorie content and portion size of foods since you'll be eating more of them. What I'm trying to say is that when eating healthily, you'll be seeing more and more of the same foods, so you'll actually start getting really good at knowing your portion sizes and calorie content.

Exercise- you posted the time you did for each exercise, but time really has no bearing on your intensity. They are isolated variables. You can burn more calories if your intensity is higher in the same 1 hour time slot. Ever see those people at the gym talking, talking, talking for an hour? Then they go home and tell their friends they just got back from an hour at the gym. LOL Lightly put, I'd focus more on your intensity during your workout (or timeframe if that is important to you- for most of us, we can't spend hours at a gym anyway). MY second thought for exercise is definitely to focus more on weights than you are currently. For anyone on a weight loss journey, part of your "weight" loss is going to consist of lean muscle mass loss, there's no way around that. BUT, you can prevent some of that from being lost: weight training. If you keep your muscles continually in need of repairing themselves, your body will be fighting to continually rebuild your current muscle mass. I believe you can prevent up to or around 50% of losing muscle mass during weight loss if you do weight training. The key here is to do resistance training on as many muscle groups as you can. That means performing full body workouts 2-3 times a week. Micah's comments about working out 1 but no more than 2 times a week is absolutely ridiculous unless you're eating few enough calories to offset the lack of exercise you're doing to round out your daily calorie deficit. Sure, you can lose weight by dieting alone, but why if you're perfectly able to exercise? You obviously are since you've been doing so much already. Exercising will definitely enhance your weight loss goals (and aim at losing more fat weight than muscle weight).

So, all in all, you've proven you can lose weight since you've been doing it successfully already. Congrats on your accomplishments so far because they truly are amazing!

Switch up your routine some and trick your body back into weight loss!!

Lizabell

 

[Jericho]

Hi WinterBreez!

Alter your diet so that you eat no grain-based carbohydrate: no flour, no sugar, no bread, no pasta, and no high fructose corn syrup.

this again? Ok, Listen to everyone else but this guy ok?

As far as what you are doing? Picking the right foods is one thing..eating too many calories is another. I did a little looking into Slimming World. It doesn't seem like a bad place..but it isn't anything you couldn't do on your own without paying them either. Well, ok the group support but that's not what I mean. It's trying to teach you (not sure how successful based on some info I've seen) to make the right food choices but you have to remember how much of those calories you take in means alot too.

Liz and Racer and Harold all have it right. Weight loss is calories in vs calories out. You can exercise till the cows come home but you won't lose weight if you don't control your calorie intake. Exercise is fine, I support it but really..it's not the best way to reduce your weight. Put it like this. You need a debt of 1000 calories a day from your BMR to lose 2 pounds (estimated that is). Can you burn 1000 calories off extra a day? Or is it alor easier to reduce your calorie intake by 1000. A combination of the two is great but I am sure you can see which side of the factors is more valuable.

 

[Harold14370]

I also had a look at the faqs at Slimming World. They have something called "Syn points" which look like they would be a whole lot like calories except you have to buy a book to tell you how many syn point are in various foods. There are lots of schemes like that (weight watcher points, diabetic exchange points, Richard Simmons' deal-a-meal cards). I don't see the point. What could be easier than plugging your menu item into a spreadsheet and having the computer calculate everything for you?

Calculating syn points would also be subject to the same measuring and estimating errors you would have counting calories in the conventional way. Now, the way they can claim you don't have to obsessively count every calorie, is their idea of "free foods." I'm a little bit skeptical of that concept. Bananas are on their list of free food, but an average banana has 100+ calories, and those are going to start adding up.

 

[jazzica]

what does STS mean? from the context, i presume it means no weight was lost?

 

[Harold14370]

I believe that stands for "stay the same."

 

[Siam]

Liz and Racer and Harold all have it right. Weight loss is calories in vs calories out. You can exercise till the cows come home but you won't lose weight if you don't control your calorie intake. Exercise is fine, I support it but really..it's not the best way to reduce your weight.

I can attest to this, whole-heartedly. If I exercise vigorously six days per week my weight will not budge and my body fat will not decrease unless I am strict about the calories I'm taking in. It's a little bit of an adjustment at first to track and measure everything, but I have found that it gets easier once you get an eye for it, and soon you can pack your lunch without stress, and breakfast gets easier and faster as you go along and find what works for you.

 

[Lizabell1]

I agree totally about reducing calories being a lot easier and probably more efficient for weight loss, but I want to add in why exercise (specifically resistance training) is an important pillar to weight loss.

1. When we're talking about instilling a healthy lifestyle, this should not only include eating healthily, but incorporating a variety of exercising as well to keep your body healthy. The heart needs cardio and your muscles need attention, too, to do their thing.

2. As mentioned by my last post, part of "weight" loss comes from lean muscle mass since the body is taking from fat stores as well as protein and water stores. Since lean muscle is active tissue, using far more calories to maintain itself than fat does, it would make sense to want to keep as much of that as possible so that you can keep up the amount of calories your body is burning on a daily basis. Plus, since resistance training will help keep your muscles continually rebuilding themselves, you reduce the amount of lean muscle you lose while you're reducing your overall weight. For instance, in a 10 pound weight loss, I'd rather have fought to make sure only about 2.5 lbs of that was lean muscle loss rather than 5 lbs. BIG difference isn't it? OR in a 20 pound weight loss, wouldn't you rather have lost 15 lbs of fat vs. 10 lbs of fat? These are not exact figures, mind you, but fairly close to what happens and are used to illustrate my point.

 

[TheFitRebel]

Activity over exercise

I too want to throw my hat into the ring on reducing calories vs. burning them.

The bottom line is that we simply don't burn calories all that fast. Most people burn well under 1000 for each hour of exercise and that's even if they are working out pretty hard too.

I also wanted to bring up the idea of energy levels too. One of the disadvantages to exercise is that it can cause us to become tired and move less through the day and even the week. I know lots of folks who partake of a heavy exercise session only to plop on the sofa and eat a huge dinner because they are famished and erase the whole deal.

This is why I'm not at all a fan of seeking fatigue on exercise. I never lift to failure (you hardly ever need to) and I always finish workouts with a little left in the tank. As I always said, no one ever got in shape by becoming tired and exhausted. If anything the opposite may be true.

Oh one more thing:

time and intensity are certainly Dependant variables. If it wasn't we could sprint all out for miles and miles. The more intense an activity is the shorter time span you can do of it and vise versa.

 

[Racer_X]

Good luck!

Kara, this one explained why I run so damned much - endurance training for endurance racing. Sorry you missed it!

 

[Harold14370]

Plus, you get to run forever, play your sport forever (mine's roadracing motorcycles), outlast the competition, and, (in my opinion) have a better quality of life.
...
In just about a month and a half, maybe two months, it'll change to be only exercise, and I cannot tell you how much I'm looking forward to that. On that day, I will also call my 132-pound weight loss program a complete success.

Forever is a long time. The all-exercise strategy may work for an athletic young fellow like yourself, but at some point you will probably find you need a different approach. A weight loss program is never a complete success because it has to continue indefinitely.

 

[Racer_X]

Good Luck!

 

[Lizabell1]

The bottom line is that we simply don't burn calories all that fast. Most people burn well under 1000 for each hour of exercise and that's even if they are working out pretty hard too.

True, most people do burn well under 1000 calories/hr of exercise... but where you say you're getting fed up is based in your expectations, or at least that is from my perspective. 1 hour of pure running for me should burn somewhere in the neighborhood of 600-700 calories...most people don't run for that long... I still don't. Granted, I'm a female with 20 lbs to my goal weight so most men could certainly burn more, maybe around 900-1000 cal for that same hour, but my point is that most people starting off on their weight loss plan aren't ready to run full out for 1 hour, so why would they set that expectation for themselves? Most people looking to lose weight (especially at the start) would not get anywhere close to burning 1000 cal in 1 hour. While I agree with the argument that it is easier to cut calories than to burn them, there's absolutely no reason why the two can't work in perfect harmony...especially, for example, in situations like many females where they're not severely overweight/obese: our maintenance calorie levels are too close to our BMR (or no less than say 1200 cal/day), therefore the only way to safely knock out 1000 calories a day is to exercise while cutting calories. My husband could easily knock off 1000 cals a day from diet alone, but for me, I need to incorporate a low cal diet along with exercise to see 1-2lb/wk results. See? Example why a calorie restrictive diet alone is not the be-all, end-all for everyone.

I also wanted to bring up the idea of energy levels too. One of the disadvantages to exercise is that it can cause us to become tired and move less through the day and even the week. I know lots of folks who partake of a heavy exercise session only to plop on the sofa and eat a huge dinner because they are famished and erase the whole deal.

And most people who have continued exercising through that initial tiring phase will tell you that they started feeling more energized, even while still on a calorie restrictive diet. Most people will admit to feeling fatigue when they go on a calorie restrictive diet or when the start exercising, or when they combine both. That is normal; they've altered their normal routine and their body and mind need to adjust. That doesn't mean that exercise is now a "disadvantage" to their weight loss efforts. Or, put another way, your same argument could be used for shunning a calorie restrictive diet since those too have been known to cause people to feel famished and gorge on food. But, that doesn't mean that people should stop eating low calorie diets because they are now detrimental to their weight loss efforts.

I also argue that those people who are "famished", and as a result "eat a huge dinner", somehow believe that the power of making a sensible choice within their diet limits is somehow taken away from them. They can choose to eat a more calorie dense meal at that time or a less calorie dense meal. The power to make the better choice is still theirs.

This is why I'm not at all a fan of seeking fatigue on exercise. I never lift to failure (you hardly ever need to) and I always finish workouts with a little left in the tank. As I always said, no one ever got in shape by becoming tired and exhausted. If anything the opposite may be true.

LOL I just plain don't agree. I'm not saying you're wrong, because I think you've got it right for certain goals that an individual may have, but there are certainly cases where lifting to the point of failure or to the point where you've exhausted yourself is actually the best plan of action. It's not as black and white as you're suggesting.

Oh one more thing:

time and intensity are certainly Dependant variables. If it wasn't we could sprint all out for miles and miles. The more intense an activity is the shorter time span you can do of it and vise versa.

No, actually they are independent variables. You've missed my point. I have the choice to work out however intense I want in that same 1 hour time slot. Time has no bearing on my intensity. Sure, my intensity can reduce the time I spend on an activity, but even still, it is not absolute.


My impression from reading your post is that you just plain don't enjoy exercise, and if this is true, that is totally cool since everyone has the right to their own choices, feelings and such. But, can you see how perspective alters how we approach the same goals? There are the same number of pros to cons (if not more pros) when it comes to the benefits of exercise for weight loss. My advice to anyone who wants to be healthy is to understand that both diet AND exercise are integral to making that happen. Those with a lot to lose may find it easier and possibly safer on their joints if they don't use exercise as a tool right away. But, the closer anyone gets to their goal weight, the more crucial exercise becomes to their weight loss efforts.

 

[Lizabell1]

Forever is a long time. The all-exercise strategy may work for an athletic young fellow like yourself, but at some point you will probably find you need a different approach. A weight loss program is never a complete success because it has to continue indefinitely.

I assume you meant a healthy lifestyle, but just to clarify, a weight loss program should not have to continue indefinitely...a weight maintenance program should.

 

[Harold14370]

I assume you meant a healthy lifestyle, but just to clarify, a weight loss program should not have to continue indefinitely...a weight maintenance program should.

That's certainly true, unless you want to disappear. But, it feels just the same anyway.