Weight Loss Thread

I do weights first then cardio, I've heard differing things about which is better or worse. I am inclined to think it probably doesn't matter.

Ichu_sl said:

I'm pretty sure it's correct that if you do cardio to get your heart rate up to where it needs to be and then maintain it for your weights workout you burn noticeably more calories.

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No, and it'd make the weights workout sub 100% efficiency even if someone did this.

The reason why people say do cardio after weights is so you are fresh and have everything to give. With that logic, you'd be purposely tiring yourself out just to go and lift weights. Cardio doesn't require the same intensity.

Binkles_sl said:

Swimming is amazing. I prefer to think of it as body sculpting for the lazy efficient and inefficient alike. Four times a week, roughly a hour of actual swimming, and results are seemingly full-proof. That does presuppose increasing the rigor, slowly, over the year, but you can half-ass most of it and still see results. You'll never get bulky, but the physique will be appropriate.

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Swimming is also amazingly torturously boring, assuming you mean like doing laps in the pool. Good workout if you can stand it and all.

I'm not saying go run your ass off for an hour before hitting the weights. My reasoning was that spending even 5 minutes to bring your heart rate up before hitting the weights should be beneficial. Again, I could be wrong.

I randomly spin on the bike for 5 minutes sometimes before a workout, makes no difference. However, like Arkk said, doing 30 minutes of solid cardio and then trying to lift weights is an exercise in futility.

Also, why are people suggesting a 280+lb guy do a lot of cardio and HIIT? He'll DEMOLISH his joints doing that. Adjusting his eating and doing weights will be waaaay better for him than suddenly deciding to run 2-3 miles a day.

Actually to be fair I said do interval training and work himself up to HIIT and also said changing his diet would drastically change his weight. Know your body, don't destroy your joints. Besides, I don't think a 280 lb guy is going to be doing much in terms of true HIIT.

Fiance weighed herself tonight... down 2.2 pounds from last week. She looks like a twig. Gonna have to dickslap her with knowledge tomorrow.

That puts her at 96 lbs? Sounds like she needs to increase her calorie intake, losing mass also means losing muscle. If she works out, going up to maintenance in calories might make her look even better, maybe phrase it in terms like that for her. If she went from 140 to 96 that's an insane body transformation. If she's just being a control freak, tell her she needs to change her goal, tell her that she should have a goal of looking good, not losing weight, and that those 2 goals are not always the same thing. I love myfitnesspal too, but she's got it set up wrong if she's still trying to eat a 500 calorie deficit at 96 lbs.

Why are you so mean, bro? I'm trying to converse with you about something other than coconut oil and you're just a mean, mean person.

Leadsalad_sl said:

I randomly spin on the bike for 5 minutes sometimes before a workout, makes no difference. However, like Arkk said, doing 30 minutes of solid cardio and then trying to lift weights is an exercise in futility.

Also, why are people suggesting a 280+lb guy do a lot of cardio and HIIT? He'll DEMOLISH his joints doing that. Adjusting his eating and doing weights will be waaaay better for him than suddenly deciding to run 2-3 miles a day.

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I doubt he could run 2-3 miles even if anyone was telling him to, can start with walking. There's also other ways to get cardio than running. But cardio is going to be the best habit to get into to drop and keep weight off. You guys can be gym rats all you want but I believe that regular cardio is the key to health and happiness.

No one should ignore weight lifting. You don't have to be a power lifter and squat and deadlift insane weights, but some kind of lifting routine--no matter how light--is always good. People who only do cardio look like shit and I've never known a runner who didn't have knee problems in his/her old age.

Heres my 2 cents. Background : Am 29, 6'3, weight 195 and did heavy training in the past 7 years.
From 22 to 26 i was big time into rockclimbing. No not hiking, rockclimbing. It doesnt come much closer than that for a sport where power to weight ratio is the key. At that time while i was in my prime, i was at around 180 lbs. No chest power, no leg power. Was all in the back muscles, arms, fingers for contact strenght.

At 26, decided i hated my daily computering job sitting on my ass all day, needed action and a job i actually loved waking up in the morning and drive to. Started prepping myself to apply to firefighter academy. I had a good base but needed a different kind of physical shape. This time more cardio / power oriented. Followed the advices and planning of a professional trainer since i didnt have time to fuck around and learn from my mistakes.

My week looked liked this:

monday : i called it marathon like cardio ( was going out for runs of an hour and half)
tuesday : hit the weights using a pyramid approach where i was hitting the rep target of bulking up (peaked at 215lbs) and also developping power and physical endurance.
wenesday : rest day, eat chicken num num num
thursday: power endurance day, did intervals (sprints/suicides/squares/). This is short duration endurance push till you vomit kind of approach.
friday : rest day
saturday: mountain running. Find a hill / small mountain, take your shoes and a stop watch. Get better times each trip you do.
sunday: Hit the weights again and sleep early for the monday night marathon-like smooth cardio.

2 years later down the road, now am in trimming / cutting mode while keeping my power. I feel like a beast with a side bonus of actually looking like an athlete.
Background done.

With that said, fore the massive dude who plans to cut weight i have the following advices:

1-Hit the gym at LEAST 3 times a week. A session can done in an hour if you dont fuck around and arrive prepared. I beleive 3 times is the minimum to start rolling the ball to see a real difference in your shape and thats after coaching a few peeps around me.

2-Do a mix of weight lifting and cardio. You need both. Yours joints are fragile? Hit the bike, do rowing, elliptics, etc etc. Id suggest 1 session of weights and the other 2 being a mix of cardio and power cardio (short duration/ high intensity) if you decide to go 3 times a week, especially since you seems to have a buttload of fat to chew into.

3-Have a target / objective that motivates you. I cant stress this enough. Mine was firefighter school. My gf is those random trail running competitions in your nearby area that you can find online. To each is on. Youll need something that drives your ass out of the house after work to hit the gym. Otherwise i give you a month or 2 before canceling the whole project. Most important : if you drive home after work to pick up your shit, dont sit on the fuckin coach. Its a death trap. If you sit down, you wont get back out, especially if you had a tiresome day at work.

4- Find a partner. There will be nights where you dont feel like doing shit but hey, theres your buddy calling you to make sure youre still coming to the gym with him / her.

5- Do YOUR training. It drives me nuts everytime i see 2 different person doing the same workout / using same weights. Sorry pals, wont work. You have different needs since your partner isnt the same freakin physical copy of you. Following that line, meet a trainer. He will suggest stuff and give you a basic structure, then tweak that program with activities you find more enjoyable.

6-Go to a gym where the hot babes are training. That might sound retarded, but everything that will push your sorry ass out of the door to the gym is gonna help. You have a gym at 1 min walking distance from your place but its always empty? Drive to the other one 20 mins down the road.

7- Cut sodas. No more pepsis, coke, seven up , sprite blahblahblah. Drink water. Cut pre processed food you throw in the microwave. Freakin buy the chicken, beef, porc, vegetables, rice, pastas etc, and learn to cook ffs. Put a laptop near the stove and follow basic recipes you can google online. Eat healthy and watch what you put in your mouth but have a cheat day to reward you every week. Friday is rest day? Have a cheeseburger. Just no more sodas, cheat day or not.

8-Have fun, learn to enjoy the exhaustion you feel when you leave the gym. Its addictive beleive me.

I can give you more details of the programs i did but i wanted to share a few general guide lines i feel that works. God i went on sorry for the wall of text, slow day at work.

I lost 55 lbs last year (heaviest I'd ever been) doing Kris Gethin's 12-week (went from size 42 to 36 -and when I weighed 140 as a teenager I was size 34 - I'm not an ectomorph). Why it worked for me was everything was laid out. If you have the willpower to follow instructions, it will work. That being said, it wasn't easy either. The food sucked ass, and between the prepping, regular work, and working out, that takes up your entire day pretty much.

I doubt I'd do it again, but it has given me a great sense of what's needed to stay in shape, and the fact that I've done it before is great motivator. I still do 30 minutes of cardio in the morning and at night, either swimming or on the bike while watching TV or reading/posting on the tablet. Playing console games while on an exercise bike is fun too, time goes by really fast.

I still prefer to eat lean meats (still grind my own dry ass hamburgers), brown rice, and a ton of veggies and fruits. Days of Fried food are over for me. It upsets my stomach if I even try.

The best part of doing the program for me, though, was motivating other people to do it as they saw my results. While coworkers would joke with me about constantly eating every 2 hours, several joined a gym and started working out. My brother in law, who by no stretch of the imagination was obese, lost ~70 pounds after seeing my results. He now works and participates in running events in town (one or two a month here).

Oh yeah, the sex is 10x better, and it feels good getting looks from women again.

I will say that choosing the right gym is important. I go to Lifetime, which is expensive, but it's the size of a small mall, and has everything you need. The showers use softened water, they provide lockers and towels, rarely have to wait for equipment (except Mondays) and yeah, all the hot chicks workout there. I like to use the exercise bikes located directly behind the stairmasters.

Lastly, get a good phone app for working out. It makes it easier to make sure you're doing what you're supposed to, and you get to see your progress week over week.

Binkles_sl said:

Swimming is amazing. I prefer to think of it as body sculpting for the lazy efficient and inefficient alike. Four times a week, roughly a hour of actual swimming, and results are seemingly full-proof. That does presuppose increasing the rigor, slowly, over the year, but you can half-ass most of it and still see results. You'll never get bulky, but the physique will be appropriate.

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I have been considering starting to swim again myself. I used to enjoy swimming when I was younger. I am basically in the same boat as Stonewall in terms of weight. I am 5'10" and around 270 lbs. I have been modifying my diet over the past couple of weeks. Because I need to do 'wacky' things to keep my interest and I listen to the Joe Rogan podcast I was turned on to the Bulletproof Diet, etc. and it seems to be working. I have dropped 15 lbs in the past 3 weeks and that was just with diet modification.

I would like a goal based activity around the belt system rather than just losing weight. My goal is to drop weight until I am sub 250 or so and then start a combat sport, I am thinking BJJ. Again, I generally need weirder stuff than just running or swimming to keep interest long term.

Just because I always get a gym membership and use it for 30 - 60 days then stop I may bring out my wife's P90X DVDs and do the cardio / yoga ones to see if I can develop a habit.

Noodleface_sl said:

Actually to be fair I said do interval training and work himself up to HIIT and also said changing his diet would drastically change his weight. Know your body, don't destroy your joints. Besides, I don't think a 280 lb guy is going to be doing much in terms of true HIIT.

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This is why everyone, especially overweight people and women, needs to lift weights. Not light weights for high reps either. They need to be heavy. Weight lifting will increase bone density and strengthen tendons and ligaments. It's why I encourage my mother to lift weights.

Rombo_sl said:

2-Do a mix of weight lifting and cardio. You need both. Yours joints are fragile? Hit the bike, do rowing, elliptics, etc etc. Id suggest 1 session of weights and the other 2 being a mix of cardio and power cardio (short duration/ high intensity) if you decide to go 3 times a week, especially since you seems to have a buttload of fat to chew into.

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For all the obese people, find yourself a beginner strength program. Any of the 3x5 or 5x5 programs will do. Starting Strength, StrongLifts 5x5, Reg Park 5x5, Bill Starr's 5x5...whatever. As long as it includes squats, deadlifts, bench, and press (and hopefully rows too). Then start walking 5 times a week. You're not so much doing the cardio for burning calories, but just getting your body used to moving. You'll lose calories by body recomposition (increasing your metabolism with the additional muscle).

Also, a note. Don't do cardio before you lift. 5 minutes to warm up your muscle is ok, but it's preferable to just do warm up sets instead. Do your cardio after you lift!

3-Have a target / objective that motivates you. I cant stress this enough.

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So much this! If you don't have short term goals that you can hit, you're going to quit. Do some reading to figure out what's reasonable.

McCheese_sl said:

No one should ignore weight lifting. You don't have to be a power lifter and squat and deadlift insane weights, but some kind of lifting routine--no matter how light--is always good. People who only do cardio look like shit and I've never known a runner who didn't have knee problems in his/her old age.

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You can get muscle workouts without lifting weights. I do 100+ miles a week of cycling but I don't "look like shit". I have a pull up bar which I use and also use on the floor for push ups and dips. I also surf some in summer. Once again, there's more cario than running too, swimming will work your arms too. I've got muscle tone and although I'm quite lean I don't look skeletal despite all the pure cardio. (My body is also probably very adjusted to the amount of cycling I do though, but that's a different matter for this discussion.) I have zero interest in being all swole and spending a fuck ton of time in some overpriced gym full of doucebags when I can be outside in nature.

My thing is, 90% of people who say "I'm fat, I want to start working out" don't really mean they want to get cut, they mean they want to lose weight. Cardio and dietary change are the best way to that goal and the best way to initiate lasting lifestyle change. If in that process they end up toning up with weight, that's great. I just think most gym people immediately start planning a weightlifting focused workout routine for all these chubsters and its really not addressing what they are after. It also tends towards more technical schedules that are turn offs to someone who's been on the couch for a decade. Get off your ass and hit the treadmill 20 minutes a day, stop eating sugar, cut sodas, no snacking. That's all there really is to losing weight for the average Joe. This thread is called "weight loss" not "weight lifting".

Most of you are giving solid advice though. Rombo's schedule looks like a great balance. I just get tired of seeing it, I feel like the majority of people joining a gym to lose weight are more likely to ignore cardio in favor of weight training, when the reverse would serve them better overall. For someone who's already lost the weight and needs to tweak and dial-in their routine, then obviously some sort of weight training is invaluable.

Except the majority of people in a gym are doing cardio. Have you ever been to a gym? A lot of them it's just rows and rows of treadmills and stair steppers and ellipticals.

The problem with cardio is that it's a fixed effort. Once your body adapts to the stresses of it, it'll never develop further. The only thing you can do is increase the length of your runs in time/distance, and that's just endurance. So yes, if you want to be skinny fat, by all means do cardio. Cardio your fucking face off. But if you want to change the way you look, you need to do something where you can increase the stresses placed on your body. Weight lifting is the answer.

Here's a good article. It's written about a woman, but it's nerd focused so it may play well here.

Meet Staci: Your New Powerlifting Super Hero | Nerd Fitness

Well yeah, dont want people here to copy paste what my training weeks looked like.

Be progressive in whatever training you do. Dont go all out and kill yourself in the first month. Regarding weights, you can work both cardio and pure power by lowering the rest time between reps. Have a crossfit approach to it. I hate crossfit with all the ''throwing-weights'' that goes with it, but i apply the short rest between reps or no rest at all principles to both work muscles AND cardio. Youll trim down fast.

Also, an ipod and a good list of ''training'' beats will help push you foward. I know i cant fuckin stand bruno mars playing in the gym speakers.

You can get muscle workouts without lifting weights. I do 100+ miles a week of cycling but I don't "look like shit". I have a pull up bar which I use and also use on the floor for push ups and dips. I also surf some in summer. Once again, there's more cario than running too, swimming will work your arms too. I've got muscle tone and although I'm quite lean I don't look skeletal despite all the pure cardio. (My body is also probably very adjusted to the amount of cycling I do though, but that's a different matter for this discussion.) I have zero interest in being all swole and spending a fuck ton of time in some overpriced gym full of doucebags when I can be outside in nature.

My thing is, 90% of people who say "I'm fat, I want to start working out" don't really mean they want to get cut, they mean they want to lose weight. Cardio and dietary change are the best way to that goal and the best way to initiate lasting lifestyle change. If in that process they end up toning up with weight, that's great. I just think most gym people immediately start planning a weightlifting focused workout routine for all these chubsters and its really not addressing what they are after. It also tends towards more technical schedules that are turn offs to someone who's been on the couch for a decade. Get off your ass and hit the treadmill 20 minutes a day, stop eating sugar, cut sodas, no snacking. That's all there really is to losing weight for the average Joe. This thread is called "weight loss" not "weight lifting".

Most of you are giving solid advice though. Rombo's schedule looks like a great balance. I just get tired of seeing it, I feel like the majority of people joining a gym to lose weight are more likely to ignore cardio in favor of weight training, when the reverse would serve them better overall. For someone who's already lost the weight and needs to tweak and dial-in their routine, then obviously some sort of weight training is invaluable.

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When I said people who do pure cardio "look like shit" I was talking about people who do pure cardio (i.e treadmill, elliptical, exercise bike), not people like you who do functional exercises and body weight routines.

Anyway, I disagree with your assertion that most people who say "I'm fat, I want to start working out" don't mean they want to get cut. That's exactly what they want: to look like all the celebrities on TV and in magazines. Nobody wants to be a thin, flabby sack of loose skin. In fact, I'd argue that people who only do cardio at the gym are more likely to get frustrated and quit because they won't see as much change. They'll quickly go from a fat, flabby person to a thin, flabby person and they'll think "I weigh 180 pounds, why the fuck don't I look like Brad Pitt?".

In my opinion, the most important things for a fatty trying to lose weight and get into shape are (in order of importance):

1) Diet. I don't think anyone would disagree that diet is the most important. You can kill it in the gym but if you eat like shit it'll show.
2) A solid workout plan. This can be doing powerlifting or simply a 10 - 20 minute body weight routine. But you should do SOMETHING to give your body some strength and tone up.
3) Cardio. Functional cardio is best (mountain biking, swimming, some kind of sport, etc.)