lifting weights for weight loss

if i lift weights 3 times a week and the only cardio i do is walking and i mean minimal walking, will this still work?  there's been a lot of articles on supporting weight training for weight loss because it burns fat better than cardio, but i'm confused.  is it because the toning and increase in muscle mass that burns fat? or is it because it raises the metabolism?

Original Post by melkor:

 We've been over this before.

 The group that did cardio and weight training did 15 minutes of steady-state cardio- and do you seriously suggest that 15 minutesof cardio - about 100-150 calories above RMR for an average level of effort, (possibly 250cal if we were talking interval training, but we're not, we're looking at steady state cardio)

 Are you seriously suggesting that 300-500calories expended per week would explain why the strength-training group lost 10lbs of fat in the time the group that expended twice that number of calories through cardio lost 3lbs?

  I really don't know how many different ways I can tell you this man. Cardio doesn't have no impact, but it's seriously overrated for fat loss.

 I'm just telling everyone what the studies found in case they didn't take the time to read them.  You're entitled to draw your own conclusions but do not come here state that the study proved something that wasn't even part of the testing.  You opinions are valued but when you use studies to support your opinions when the studies don't actually do so or when you state opinions as facts I will call you out on it.  Why?   Because I think it's important to keep things in the proper perspective.

Also the report didn't state what the calorie deficit was for the two groups so it is more likely that the cardio/weight group lost more fat because the had a greater deficit due to diet rather than exercise. But is that the case? We don't know.  So we would need a different study to draw any conclusion other than cardio and weights are for weight loss better than cardio alone.

Also this study was done on 72 overweight people and ran for eight weeks.  The results would have no bearing on someone that has been working out for more than eight weeks.  That also wasn't part of study.

FWIW, I could have very easily used that same study to "prove" that cardio and weights are superior than weights alone for fat loss.  What the study didn't find that?  It didn't find that weights alone were better than cardio either. 

I really don't get your position here or what you think you're trying to accomplish.

 You agree that the people in the various studies quoted who did weight training lost more fat than the people who did cardio, that a calorie deficit is neccesary for fat loss, and that a calorie deficit created through cardio does not lead to qualitatively different or greater fat loss than one created through diet.

 Therefore, the addition of cardio to a dietary fat loss regime is not neccesary, while weight training will substantially improve the fat loss results of same.

 So I really don't get this insistence of yours that cardio must still somehow be useful other than as a means of creating a calorie deficit at a higher calorie intake than without it. Help me out here - why must cardio be useful for fat loss, beyond the admittedly not-insubstantial benefit of being able to eat a bit more?

 Remember, I'm not arguing that Running Makes You Fat, just that a fat loss regime based around cardio will not give you substantially different results from one based only around dietary restriction, while one that includes strength training will.

 By all means do cardio - you'll live longer, have a higher quality of life from a better cardiovascular conditioning, be less exposed to heart disease and circulatory problems; all good things. It just won't make a substantial difference in your fat loss effort over and above what dietary intervention in itself accounts for.

Original Post by helpless:

so,  is it more important to do more reps or lift heavier weights? Find a fat-loss plan and use as much weight as you can for the prescribed reps. i do know that doing it slowly does help Helps what? How do you know? and breathing correctly too.  any testimonies?  remember the goal is to burn fat, if i wanted to build strenght i would do it later.  and if weights help, how? Weight lifting preserves muscle so that a larger percentage of the calories you burn are from fat instead of lean mass, there are also theories that weight lifting increases fat burning in the time after the exercise is done  raises metabolism or does the fat actually shrinks a higher metabolic rate can help fat shrink, it isn't one or the other?

also is it important to eat after doing weigths even if it was for 30 mins yes it's important, for an explanation of why look up "solving the post workout puzzle" by Dr. John Berardi?

Original Post by melkor:

 We've been over this before.

 The group that did cardio and weight training did 15 minutes of steady-state cardio- and do you seriously suggest that 15 minutes of cardio - about 100-150 calories above RMR for an average level of effort, (possibly 250cal if we were talking interval training, but we're not, we're looking at steady state cardio)

 Are you seriously suggesting that 300-500calories expended per week would explain why the strength-training group lost 10lbs of fat in the time the group that expended twice that number of calories through cardio lost 3lbs?

  I really don't know how many different ways I can tell you this man. Cardio doesn't have no impact, but it's seriously overrated for fat loss.

Is that why I stripped away 7% body fat in just a couple of months using endurance and Cardio? I am now at 9% Body fat mind you. Also, let it be clearly stated, and never understated, that prior to adding the cardio I was only doing the endurance resistance training in addition to Yoga. 

Studies are basically blanketed statistics. They take a group of people with the same body weight and subject them to the same measure of test and results. What you need are people of various backgrounds and body types to participate.

What you will then see is a major variance in the results, obviously per force of the diversity of genetics in people. We need to emphasize that when we speak of genetics we speak not of crippling peoples will, but of shaping it. You have to get grasp on your genetic make up before you can hope to achieve the exact results from the exact work out regiment someone else is doing

This is why only a few people benefit from this work out program, or that work out program, and why so many of them exist to begin with. It's not because all of them are scams, (granted, many of them are) it's because of the inherent genetic diversity within the human genome. I mean it's as simple as asking what came first sex or playboy? We have genetic variation, thus we have differences in results from different work out regiments.

No one should use a study or  statistic as their biblical absolute. Because statistics are an abstraction that cannot be upheld when it comes to something as diverse as the human race. 

melkor, the usual math check:

 You agree that the people in the various studies quoted who did weight training lost more fat than the people who did cardio, that a calorie deficit is neccesary for fat loss, and that a calorie deficit created through cardio does not lead to qualitatively different or greater fat loss than one created through diet.

 Therefore, the addition of cardio to a dietary fat loss regime is not neccesary, while weight training will substantially improve the fat loss results of same.

Your conclusion is true for overweight people who are able to safely have a nontrivial deficit with only weight lifting.  It is not practically true for people who wish to lose fat within a healthy weight range. If your BMR is sufficiently close to your sedentary burn, then cardio is tremendously helpful in being able to have enough of a deficit for fat loss.

 When you're very close to your goal weight you can't have a substantial deficit anyway, the limit is 31kcal/lbs fat mass/day (S.S. Alpert Journal of Theoretical Biology Volume 233, Issue 1, 7 March 2005, Pages 1-13) - and while I agree that it's more useful to set your BMR as the lower bounds of a useful calorie intake and use activity to create any deficit neccesary,  that's not what we're discussing here is it? But yes, in as much as it helps to give you a useful calorie deficit at a calorie intake you can live with, cardio can help.

 And nameless, we've been over that before too - you're putting the cart before the horse. Your genes express different reactions under different external stimuli leading to different results, but the human genotypes are not so diverse that the broad majority of people will not react substantially the same to the same stimuli. For the upper echelons of sports performance there's a decided effect of very small genetic variations since the margins between victory and defeat are generally within 0.1% but that's not really terribly interesting when dealing with people who aren't training and competing at that level. On the recreational/health exercise level, we're substantially similar enough that the dose-response curve to exercise is reasonably predictable. Otherwise, the BMR formulas used to calculate calorie expenditure here on CC wouldn't be 95% accurate for anyone without a hormonal abnormality.

 No-one, least of all me have said that cardio has no impact. It has applications for both health and to a small extent weight management, but the specific impact of cardio on fat loss is negligible unless you have the time and the inclination to turn it into your part-time job.

 If that's what floats your boat, go ahead - I'm not saying that doing cardio will hinder your fat loss efforts.

 It's just that there are better ways to spend your time unless you do have unlimited training time.

Original Post by floggingsully:

Original Post by helpless:

so,  is it more important to do more reps or lift heavier weights? Find a fat-loss plan and use as much weight as you can for the prescribed reps. i do know that doing it slowly does help Helps what? How do you know? and breathing correctly too.  any testimonies?  remember the goal is to burn fat, if i wanted to build strenght i would do it later.  and if weights help, how? Weight lifting preserves muscle so that a larger percentage of the calories you burn are from fat instead of lean mass, there are also theories that weight lifting increases fat burning in the time after the exercise is done  raises metabolism or does the fat actually shrinks a higher metabolic rate can help fat shrink, it isn't one or the other?

also is it important to eat after doing weigths even if it was for 30 mins yes it's important, for an explanation of why look up "solving the post workout puzzle" by Dr. John Berardi?

 

from what i have read, people would want to lift slowly because you don't want to use momentum to lift because your muscle isn't doing the job if you do it to quickly, perhaps that would be different if the weights are heavy.

but thanks for clearing up the rest.

someone brought up another point.  if a person is in the normal range of their bmi, but borderline overweight, would she/he be best doing weights?

ok melkor, just devil's advocate, from what i understand you can still have some what of an 'after burn' from doing cardio, am i correct? if so, even if its pretty marginal, wouldn't it add up over a long period of time of possibly burning a little more calories than just cutting back on calories & sitting on your butt? am i missing anything here?

Original Post by melkor:

 When you're very close to your goal weight you can't have a substantial deficit anyway, the limit is 31kcal/lbs fat mass/day (S.S. Alpert Journal of Theoretical Biology Volume 233, Issue 1, 7 March 2005, Pages 1-13) - and while I agree that it's more useful to set your BMR as the lower bounds of a useful calorie intake and use activity to create any deficit neccesary,  that's not what we're discussing here is it? But yes, in as much as it helps to give you a useful calorie deficit at a calorie intake you can live with, cardio can help.

 And nameless, we've been over that before too - you're putting the cart before the horse. Your genes express different reactions under different external stimuli leading to different results, but the human genotypes are not so diverse that the broad majority of people will not react substantially the same to the same stimuli. For the upper echelons of sports performance there's a decided effect of very small genetic variations since the margins between victory and defeat are generally within 0.1% but that's not really terribly interesting when dealing with people who aren't training and competing at that level. On the recreational/health exercise level, we're substantially similar enough that the dose-response curve to exercise is reasonably predictable. Otherwise, the BMR formulas used to calculate calorie expenditure here on CC wouldn't be 95% accurate for anyone without a hormonal abnormality.

 No-one, least of all me have said that cardio has no impact. It has applications for both health and to a small extent weight management, but the specific impact of cardio on fat loss is negligible unless you have the time and the inclination to turn it into your part-time job.

 If that's what floats your boat, go ahead - I'm not saying that doing cardio will hinder your fat loss efforts.

 It's just that there are better ways to spend your time unless you do have unlimited training time.

But I gave you my own testimonial. If cardio has no impact as to fat reduction then how is it that one and a half months of cardio did for me what 6 months of resistance/endurance alone could not do? 

I have known guys who have taken twice as long on weight training regiments to get down to my body fat level. And as I pointed out before, most of the study groups in the research you point to were of very uniform backgrounds physically. 

What you need to do is take several different body types and subject them to the same regiment and then closely analyze the results in terms of body type and relative goal. Otherwise you're using a statistical abstraction to prove something that can only be proven in a vacuum consisting of one body type. 

Original Post by nameless_shape_shifter:

Original Post by melkor:

Otherwise you're using a statistical abstraction to prove something that can only be proven in a vacuum consisting of one body type.

answer my question first please melkor, as im just curious. a concise response will do me, dont get distracted. i have limited reading & response time

Original Post by octo-luv:

ok melkor, just devil's advocate, from what i understand you can still have some what of an 'after burn' from doing cardio, am i correct? if so, even if its pretty marginal, wouldn't it add up over a long period of time of possibly burning a little more calories than just cutting back on calories & sitting on your butt? am i missing anything here?

Well, it's not like Tom hasn't brought that up before either - weight lifting causes substantially more of an afterburn both in duration (38 hours for lifting vs. maximum 5 hours for cardio) and magnitude (60-80 kcal for lifting, vs 10-20 kcal for cardio) - but that's where things start to break down.

 Post-exercise is where the important metabolic and structural adaptations to the exercise happens, but the order of magnitude for EPOC observed is way, way too small to account for what is observed in terms of effect on body composition-
  EPOC: Maybe not all that it's cracked up to be:
Effect of an acute period of resistance exercise on excess post-exercise oxygen consumption: implications for body mass management, Eur J Appl Physiol. 2002 Mar;86(5):411-7.

Effect of acute resistance exercise on postexercise oxygen consumption and resting metabolic rate in young women, Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2000 Mar;10(1):71-81.

 Even in the best-case scenario the cardio EPOC of  - what, 20 calories if you do HIIT - that's about the calorie content of 5 grams of sugar so it'd be wiped out if you had a coffee with one lump of sugar in it.

 For lifting, that would be three.

 Don't get me wrong, it does help move you in the right direction and it does add up over time but there's something missing in our understanding of what's happening. Over one week of 3xweekly lifting or HIIT, it would be - call it 15cal for HIIT and 70 for lifting per session, so 45kcal/week extra for HIIT and 210kcal/week for lifting, or about - 180kcal/month for HIIT and 840kcal/month for lifting, about the calorie content of one apple or a cheeseburger.

 Doesn't account for the famous interval training study that found an extra calorie burn outside of exercise of roughly 200kcal/week for the interval group vs. the steady state cardio group - that's the one that made people think EPOC was maybe the key variable, but when EPOC's measured directly the numbers doesn't work out.

 Eh, well - clearly there's something happening, but just what isn't quite clear. But that energy has to be expended somewhere, it doesn't just vanish - except when we try to pin it down with measurements, at any rate.

   And Nameless?

 Diet.

 While you were doing your not-really-strength training using light dumbbells and resistance bands training for muscular endurance you were not creating a sufficient calorie deficit through your diet to lose fat.  When you added in the extra calorie expenditure with cardio and didn't compensate with increased calorie intake, you were. 

 What part of "calorie deficit created through cardio does not lead to qualitatively different or greater fat loss than one created through diet." sounded like "cardio doesn't help in creating a calorie deficit"? Burn 500kcal through cardio or just not eat them in the first place leads to substantially the same result in terms of loss of body fat - if you think getting to eat 500kcal more a day is a net benefit independent of the impact on fat loss, (which I tend to think it is) - well, cardio can help you have a sensible deficit without going insane from restriction.

 However - was fat all you lost? Low body fat can look very different - here, here and here are examples of people with about 7-9% body fat but very different bodies. Two of those are doing completely insane things to their bodies to look the way they do, which is the nature of things when you're headed to the extremes...

 Anyway - as it says up top, in the FAQ: "exercise is part of a sucessful weight loss strategy, but it's definitely the junior partner to dietary change. Simply put, you cannot out-train your diet." - which I said even before Dr. Berardi came out with this study of the effects of exercise without dietary intervention. Berardi designed the workouts himself and the exercise sessions were overseen by qualified coaches. 12 weeks, 3 lifting and 2 group cardio/interval training sessions a week - and at the end of it participants had lost one pound of fat and gained 2 pounds of muscle on average.

 Which is just about no relevant change in terms of body composition.

 When it comes to weight loss, nothing at all happens unless you take control of your diet. And once you do, diet+strength training beats diet+cardio in terms of fat loss - you might actually lose just about the exact same weight but it's not weight loss but fat loss that's important and strength training causes more fat loss than cardio (Kramer, Volek et al. Influence of exercise training on physiological and performance changes with weight loss in men.)

 And cardio is still overrated.

Original Post by melkor:

Original Post by octo-luv:

ok melkor, just devil's advocate, from what i understand you can still have some what of an 'after burn' from doing cardio, am i correct? if so, even if its pretty marginal, wouldn't it add up over a long period of time of possibly burning a little more calories than just cutting back on calories & sitting on your butt? am i missing anything here?

Well, it's not like Tom hasn't brought that up before either - weight lifting causes substantially more of an afterburn both in duration (38 hours for lifting vs. maximum 5 hours for cardio) and magnitude (60-80 kcal for lifting, vs 10-20 kcal for cardio) - but that's where things start to break down.

 Post-exercise is where the important metabolic and structural adaptations to the exercise happens, but the order of magnitude for EPOC observed is way, way too small to account for what is observed in terms of effect on body composition-
  EPOC: Maybe not all that it's cracked up to be:
Effect of an acute period of resistance exercise on excess post-exercise oxygen consumption: implications for body mass management, Eur J Appl Physiol. 2002 Mar;86(5):411-7.

Effect of acute resistance exercise on postexercise oxygen consumption and resting metabolic rate in young women, Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2000 Mar;10(1):71-81.

 Even in the best-case scenario the cardio EPOC of  - what, 20 calories if you do HIIT - that's about the calorie content of 5 grams of sugar so it'd be wiped out if you had a coffee with one lump of sugar in it.

 For lifting, that would be three.

 Don't get me wrong, it does help move you in the right direction and it does add up over time but there's something missing in our understanding of what's happening. Over one week of 3xweekly lifting or HIIT, it would be - call it 15cal for HIIT and 70 for lifting per session, so 45kcal/week extra for HIIT and 210kcal/week for lifting, or about - 180kcal/month for HIIT and 840kcal/month for lifting, about the calorie content of one apple or a cheeseburger.

 Doesn't account for the famous interval training study that found an extra calorie burn outside of exercise of roughly 200kcal/week for the interval group vs. the steady state cardio group - that's the one that made people think EPOC was maybe the key variable, but when EPOC's measured directly the numbers doesn't work out.

 Eh, well - clearly there's something happening, but just what isn't quite clear. But that energy has to be expended somewhere, it doesn't just vanish - except when we try to pin it down with measurements, at any rate.

   And Nameless?

 Diet.

 While you were doing your not-really-strength training using light dumbbells and resistance bands training for muscular endurance you were not creating a sufficient calorie deficit through your diet to lose fat.  When you added in the extra calorie expenditure with cardio and didn't compensate with increased calorie intake, you were. 

 What part of "calorie deficit created through cardio does not lead to qualitatively different or greater fat loss than one created through diet." sounded like "cardio doesn't help in creating a calorie deficit"? Burn 500kcal through cardio or just not eat them in the first place leads to substantially the same result in terms of loss of body fat - if you think getting to eat 500kcal more a day is a net benefit independent of the impact on fat loss, (which I tend to think it is) - well, cardio can help you have a sensible deficit without going insane from restriction.

 However - was fat all you lost? Low body fat can look very different - here, here and here are examples of people with about 7-9% body fat but very different bodies. Two of those are doing completely insane things to their bodies to look the way they do, which is the nature of things when you're headed to the extremes...

 Anyway - as it says up top, in the FAQ: "exercise is part of a sucessful weight loss strategy, but it's definitely the junior partner to dietary change. Simply put, you cannot out-train your diet." - which I said even before Dr. Berardi came out with this study of the effects of exercise without dietary intervention. Berardi designed the workouts himself and the exercise sessions were overseen by qualified coaches. 12 weeks, 3 lifting and 2 group cardio/interval training sessions a week - and at the end of it participants had lost one pound of fat and gained 2 pounds of muscle on average.

 Which is just about no relevant change in terms of body composition.

 When it comes to weight loss, nothing at all happens unless you take control of your diet. And once you do, diet+strength training beats diet+cardio in terms of fat loss - you might actually lose just about the exact same weight but it's not weight loss but fat loss that's important and strength training causes more fat loss than cardio (Kramer, Volek et al. Influence of exercise training on physiological and performance changes with weight loss in men.)

 And cardio is still overrated.

Point number one, I am speaking from personal experience here, not relying on a statistical abstraction of one body type performing in the same series of tests, to confirm what is or is not good for me. Why should anyone look at a study that is not based on objective research but on a subjective conclusion based on subjective expectation? The feeling I get when I read the study and look into the background of the people involved? They have a personal bias against those who got where they are not using the same techniques as themselves. 

I am not saying, nor was I ever saying, that some degree of musculature is not necessary for overall health. But the degree to which it is advocated by most people is that everyones role models ought to be body builders. It is possible to have far less muscle than someone else and be quite a bit healthier than them in overall body composition. Low body fat is low body fat, and this is always facilitated by some degree of muscle development and maintainence, but not to the extreme proportion advocated by most post-body building physical trainers. Such individuals would have us believe the only way to physical health is to look like the incredible hulk. 

My earlier reference to professional boxers was my attempt to illustrate that, as an example, in the Muhammad Ali, George foreman fight, the athlete with the better cardio disposition won, not the one who performed more strength training techniques. I would venture to say that Foreman was at least twice as strong as Ali at the time of their fight. In other words, the healthier athlete won the competition. And what determined that better health was cardio and endurance conditioning, not strength training, there are countless cases of this in martial arts as well, sometimes more mass leads to less performance. Again I emphasize that endurance does include strength training, otherwise such a person could not deliver a knock out shot to his opponent. 

But again, I emphasize individual experience. I concur that diet is important, but I know several body builders who have terribly unhealthy diets, because it is the only way for them to maintain their physiques, according to them and their physical trainers. As an example, I have an acquaintance whose basic diet consists of about nine eggs in the morning, 5 hamburgers at night, 3 servings of muscle milk, and a lot more garbage that raises his Glycemic index and his cholesterol levels. And it has been confirmed that his cholesterol levels are through the roof, despite his muscular physique. The point is, he is not the healthiest person in the world, even though conventional wisdom would say he appears to be. I mentioned to him that he would still be muscular if he replaced red meat with fish, and eggs with egg whites, and muscle milk with a more natural gainer, but he just shrugged and said 'but i'll lose mass'.

That, my friend, is pure ego. And if your work out and diet regiment consists, in the main, of what your ego wants, then you're setting yourself up for poor health, despite having muscles that rival your ego in size. Which brings me to another point. If you conducted a psychological interview with any of the test subjects involved, it is likely that most of them would have, by the end of the interview, revealed that there number one reason for wanting to be in shape, is appearance. I think most of the people who claim hyper musculature to be the optimum sign of health are those who started training for appearance first and health, just as an added benefit. But as my comments about my friend suggest, appearances can be quite deceiving, when the doctors report confirms it. Again, to the original poster, just experiment with all these suggestions and see which one/s work best for you. Do not base the outcome on some study, base it on your own first hand experience. 

wow nameless, i guess its a bit different to what us women folk are subjected to.  but the whole hyper musculature thing is not what say someone with my exposure to fitness wisdom over years, has gone through. most fitness wisdom that i have been exposed to for the last 2 or even 3 decades for females, has been all about cardio, light weights. its these last couple of years that i've really noticed more average women taking notice of lifting & lifting heavier. i guess there are always one extremes to the next.

Original Post by octo-luv:

wow nameless, i guess its a bit different to what us women folk are subjected to.  but the whole hyper musculature thing is not what say someone with my exposure to fitness wisdom over years, has gone through. most fitness wisdom that i have been exposed to for the last 2 or even 3 decades for females, has been all about cardio, light weights. its these last couple of years that i've really noticed more average women taking notice of lifting & lifting heavier. i guess there are always one extremes to the next.

Well the reason I speak against these extreme stereotypes is that they are in direct contradiction to my own personal experience. If I were to leave it up to the media my perceptions about what the average female wanted would be limited to a work out regiment that consisted of me having to bench press 350 pounds and eat like a horse on steroids. 

It has been my personal experience that most young, seminally attractive and confident females want lean healthy physiques, not bulky hulkish ones. I have had no problem thus attracting females without the help of a gigantic muscle fetish. And it is even better with foreign girls as they tend to be less conditioned by that sexist stereotype. Bottom line for me is that adequate strength does not equate to having to be hulkish.

And I also find it sexist whenever I hear a person say women are not suppose to have bulking muscles and any time you see one with them they are invariably on steroids. I have known girls who have trained very hard for such physiques and who did it no differently than any other natural body builder, and by adopting a diet similar to these people. That said I still think the typical body building diet (at least the one adopted by most) is unhealthy and full of garbage that raises the glycemic index, cholesterol levels and contributes to poor health in the long term. 

But they do it for the physique, not for internal health. Anything that is ego first and health second is not a great thing. natural body building is better, in the long term. No one needs to look like a hulk, and there is no evidence that being that way adds anything to personal health or practical life situations. 

Original Post by octo-luv:

ok melkor, just devil's advocate, from what i understand you can still have some what of an 'after burn' from doing cardio, am i correct? if so, even if its pretty marginal, wouldn't it add up over a long period of time of possibly burning a little more calories than just cutting back on calories & sitting on your butt? am i missing anything here?

He doesn't know everything. That's not to say he knows nothing, he obviously knows a great deal and it has been successful for himself, but this does not mean it is going to be successful for you. As I have stated before, I am 9% body fat, I dropped from 13% within 2 months by simply adding 90 minutes of cardio to my regiment weekly. That is, approximately 17-20 minutes of cardio to my regiment every other day, which adds to about 4 or 5 times weekly, depending on how the days are broken up.

I added this to my previously existing regiment, which consisted of resistance bands/ (30 minutes), endurance, yoga (25 minutes) and a basic ab work (20 minutes) out with some pilates (25 minutes) thrown in for variation. What is best for you will be a matter of your personal experience. Nothing him nor I tell you will contest that. It is best to try all our suggestions on a trial basis and see which works best for you or what you wish to accomplish. I never wanted to be a hulking muscle monster, so what I do has worked and is continuing to work toward my goal/s. 

Edit:

I wanted to also add that I am not trying to perpetuate an argument with anyone here. Merely stating that none of us here is the quintessential master of perfect health. We each have insight to contribute based on personal experience. And we each have more to learn. Now if I were a completely out of shape obese person I wouldn't dare share insights with anyone because my body would be evidence that I know absolutely nothing about the subject. I am in fairly decent shape, therefor I only speak as someone who knows what he is doing has worked to a degree and is continuing to work, at least for myself. Which is no different than anyone elses approach here. 

Original Post by nameless_shape_shifter:

Original Post by melkor:

 When it comes to weight loss, nothing at all happens unless you take control of your diet. And once you do, diet+strength training beats diet+cardio in terms of fat loss - you might actually lose just about the exact same weight but it's not weight loss but fat loss that's important and strength training causes more fat loss than cardio (Kramer, Volek et al. Influence of exercise training on physiological and performance changes with weight loss in men.)

 And cardio is still overrated.

Point number one, I am speaking from personal experience here, not relying on a statistical abstraction of one body type performing in the same series of tests, to confirm what is or is not good for me. Why should anyone look at a study that is not based on objective research but on a subjective conclusion based on subjective expectation? The feeling I get when I read the study and look into the background of the people involved? They have a personal bias against those who got where they are not using the same techniques as themselves.

Huh? What are you talking about personal bias in an American College of Sports Medicine study for? How much more objective than peer-reviewed research can you get? Just because you desperately want reality to be something other than what the science shows it to be to does not mean that your feelings reflect anything but your own lack of objectivity.

 You know, I'm going to give you one point - if you're looking at modern-day professional "bodybuilders" with their kamikaze drug use and monstrous steroid bloat it's hard not to be taken aback. Frank Zane was 178lbs when he won the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition, and competed at a maximum of 185-191lbs. Nowadays he couldn't have gotten a job as a towel boy with the likes of Coleman (292lbs contest, 330lbs offseason) and Cutler (265lbs, 310lbs offseason) and their similarly over-muscled and drug-bloated junkie brethren trying to move around the stage. When you get to the point where you've made yourself dysfunctional parody of maleness like a modern bodybuilder who can't even reach down to tie his own shoelaces for fear of tearing something...  well, that's frankly insane. If that's what your friend is doing, I can see why you're overreacting the way you are.

 And there's no excuse for not educating yourself on even the basics of health and nutrition like your friend is apparently doing - if he did, he'd know that most of what he's doing is counterproductive to his goals. Proper non-garbage food will support muscle growth and fat loss orders of magnitude better over both the short and long term than a diet consisting of industrial byproducts. If his body isn't stressed by crap food it will tolerate training better.

 But again - what are you talking about? "I think most of the people who claim hyper musculature to be the optimum sign of health are those who started training for appearance first and health, just as an added benefit" - which study would that be? 'Cause none of the ones I linked to had muscle growth as a goal.

*sigh*

 You're still doing it - attributing to your exercise what is adequately explained by your diet. 20 minutes of average-impact cardio would be - what, about 8kcal/minute, up from 0.9-1.1kcal/minute for a sedentary person, so about 7kcal/minute more than you'd have burned anyway, or 140kcal/day, 4 times a week, that's 560kcal/week extra, or about 5 weeks to lose 1lbs of fat. If you were to do sprint training or an unreasonably fast 6-minute mile that would be about 21kcal/minute, or 20kcal/minute above baseline - 400kcal/day or 1600kcal/week, on average 2.2 weeks to lose 1lbs of fat if you didn't increase intake to compensate.

Is that consistent with your rate of fat loss?

 Or did you change your diet at the same time?

 Reducing your calorie intake by about 300kcal/day, 7 days a week would give you a weekly calorie deficit of 2100kcal, or about 1.5 weeks to lose the same amount of fat, no cardio required.

 (If you're interested in developing fighting endurance I suggest you check out the Hammer Down Program from Chad Waterbury or just about everything Ross Enamait has up on his site. Training for a specific athletic function and eating properly to support your training tends to make your body look like you've trained for that specific athletic function. And though Glassman is an ass and the Crossfit workout of the day is only a marginally sane training system, their stated goal of developing reasonable competence in most physical endeavors without reaching competitive levels in any of them makes for a better, more versatile human being than the tendency towards overuse injuries and movement dysfunctions that results from sports-specific training without appropriate crosstraining.)

 And I would still like to know where you got that interesting notion of 40lbs being the maximum appropriate training weight for anyone.

Original Post by melkor:

Original Post by nameless_shape_shifter:

Original Post by melkor:

 When it comes to weight loss, nothing at all happens unless you take control of your diet. And once you do, diet+strength training beats diet+cardio in terms of fat loss - you might actually lose just about the exact same weight but it's not weight loss but fat loss that's important and strength training causes more fat loss than cardio (Kramer, Volek et al. Influence of exercise training on physiological and performance changes with weight loss in men.)

 And cardio is still overrated.

Point number one, I am speaking from personal experience here, not relying on a statistical abstraction of one body type performing in the same series of tests, to confirm what is or is not good for me. Why should anyone look at a study that is not based on objective research but on a subjective conclusion based on subjective expectation? The feeling I get when I read the study and look into the background of the people involved? They have a personal bias against those who got where they are not using the same techniques as themselves.

Huh? What are you talking about personal bias in an American College of Sports Medicine study for? How much more objective than peer-reviewed research can you get? Just because you desperately want reality to be something other than what the science shows it to be to does not mean that your feelings reflect anything but your own lack of objectivity.

 You know, I'm going to give you one point - if you're looking at modern-day professional "bodybuilders" with their kamikaze drug use and monstrous steroid bloat it's hard not to be taken aback. Frank Zane was 178lbs when he won the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition, and competed at a maximum of 185-191lbs. Nowadays he couldn't have gotten a job as a towel boy with the likes of Coleman (292lbs contest, 330lbs offseason) and Cutler (265lbs, 310lbs offseason) and their similarly over-muscled and drug-bloated junkie brethren trying to move around the stage. When you get to the point where you've made yourself dysfunctional parody of maleness like a modern bodybuilder who can't even reach down to tie his own shoelaces for fear of tearing something...  well, that's frankly insane. If that's what your friend is doing, I can see why you're overreacting the way you are.

 And there's no excuse for not educating yourself on even the basics of health and nutrition like your friend is apparently doing - if he did, he'd know that most of what he's doing is counterproductive to his goals. Proper non-garbage food will support muscle growth and fat loss orders of magnitude better over both the short and long term than a diet consisting of industrial byproducts. If his body isn't stressed by crap food it will tolerate training better.

 But again - what are you talking about? "I think most of the people who claim hyper musculature to be the optimum sign of health are those who started training for appearance first and health, just as an added benefit" - which study would that be? 'Cause none of the ones I linked to had muscle growth as a goal.

*sigh*

 You're still doing it - attributing to your exercise what is adequately explained by your diet. 20 minutes of average-impact cardio would be - what, about 8kcal/minute, up from 0.9-1.1kcal/minute for a sedentary person, so about 7kcal/minute more than you'd have burned anyway, or 140kcal/day, 4 times a week, that's 560kcal/week extra, or about 5 weeks to lose 1lbs of fat. If you were to do sprint training or an unreasonably fast 6-minute mile that would be about 21kcal/minute, or 20kcal/minute above baseline - 400kcal/day or 1600kcal/week, on average 2.2 weeks to lose 1lbs of fat if you didn't increase intake to compensate.

Is that consistent with your rate of fat loss?

 Or did you change your diet at the same time?

 Reducing your calorie intake by about 300kcal/day, 7 days a week would give you a weekly calorie deficit of 2100kcal, or about 1.5 weeks to lose the same amount of fat, no cardio required.

 (If you're interested in developing fighting endurance I suggest you check out the Hammer Down Program from Chad Waterbury or just about everything Ross Enamait has up on his site. Training for a specific athletic function and eating properly to support your training tends to make your body look like you've trained for that specific athletic function. And though Glassman is an ass and the Crossfit workout of the day is only a marginally sane training system, their stated goal of developing reasonable competence in most physical endeavors without reaching competitive levels in any of them makes for a better, more versatile human being than the tendency towards overuse injuries and movement dysfunctions that results from sports-specific training without appropriate crosstraining.)

 And I would still like to know where you got that interesting notion of 40lbs being the maximum appropriate training weight for anyone.

I cannot take this conversation seriously when you assume you know more than I do on the topic of fitness and nutrition. I grant that there are things you know that I might not have studied yet, but you have to grant the converse proposal as well, otherwise you're just being egocentric and espousing your way as the only way. Just because something is 'peer reviewed' doesn't make it the only methodology to explore. And by the way all 'peer reviewed' means in this case is that someone outside the study group studied the study within its own bounds, with or without pointing out that studies inadequacies. 

You are otherwise obfuscating calorie burn statistics that have nothing to do with variation and everything to do with containing the observation to one study. There are plenty of 'peer reviewed' research on specific psychiatric drugs, very few of which point out their hazardous long term effects. There is, on the other hand, very little peer reviewed research on the effect of most herbal remedies for many of the problems we face. The reasons for this are obvious. I also find it presumptuous of you to state 'if you want to learn about fight endurance' as if you have learned about it, and I have not. 

The way you are coming across is as a presumptuous individual who thinks he is more healthy than me  for some reason or another. I do not presume I am healthier than you do I? I do not immediately condescend upon what you say and thus speak about it as if I hold the key to the knowledge of perfect health while you do not, do I? I am a very healthy individual with a low body fat, a vast knowledge of nutrition and who has experimented with many different exercise regiments and continues to do so. I never once suggested that I knew more than you. What I continue to remind people here of is the fact that each of us has something to learn and none of us is the be all, end all of health and fitness knowledge. 

Original Post by nameless_shape_shifter:

 I do not presume I am healthier than you do I? I do not immediately condescend upon what you say and thus speak about it as if I hold the key to the knowledge of perfect health while you do not, do I?

Actually, yes, you do - You advance unverifiable claims, cite no sources, show no work,  and every time I ask you to explain specifics of your novel theories you start calling me egocentric in the apparent hope that I will give up on getting a straight answer to a simple question out of you:

Original Post by nameless_shape_shifter:

As for right now I suggest it unnecessary for anyone of any weight to exceed dumbells of 40 pounds in weight. That is my opinion based on observation. What should instead be employed, instead of adding weight, is adding reps. I think this is healthier in the long term in terms of resistance adaptation techniques. But I once again emphasize you can do this with your own body weight and/or resistance bands which cause little to no joint symptoms.

Why is 40lbs a useful limit to "anyone of any weight"?

Original Post by nameless_shape_shifter:

Original Post by melkor:

Huh? What are you talking about personal bias in an American College of Sports Medicine study for? How much more objective than peer-reviewed research can you get? Just because you desperately want reality to be something other than what the science shows it to be to does not mean that your feelings reflect anything but your own lack of objectivity.

 And I would still like to know where you got that interesting notion of 40lbs being the maximum appropriate training weight for anyone.

I cannot take this conversation seriously when you assume you know more than I do on the topic of fitness and nutrition. I grant that there are things you know that I might not have studied yet, but you have to grant the converse proposal as well, otherwise you're just being egocentric and espousing your way as the only way. Just because something is 'peer reviewed' doesn't make it the only methodology to explore. And by the way all 'peer reviewed' means in this case is that someone outside the study group studied the study within its own bounds, with or without pointing out that studies inadequacies. 

You are otherwise obfuscating calorie burn statistics that have nothing to do with variation and everything to do with containing the observation to one study. There are plenty of 'peer reviewed' research on specific psychiatric drugs, very few of which point out their hazardous long term effects. There is, on the other hand, very little peer reviewed research on the effect of most herbal remedies for many of the problems we face. The reasons for this are obvious. I also find it presumptuous of you to state 'if you want to learn about fight endurance' as if you have learned about it, and I have not. 

The way you are coming across is as a presumptuous individual who thinks he is more healthy than me  for some reason or another. I do not presume I am healthier than you do I? I do not immediately condescend upon what you say and thus speak about it as if I hold the key to the knowledge of perfect health while you do not, do I? I am a very healthy individual with a low body fat, a vast knowledge of nutrition and who has experimented with many different exercise regiments and continues to do so. I never once suggested that I knew more than you. What I continue to remind people here of is the fact that each of us has something to learn and none of us is the be all, end all of health and fitness knowledge. 

 You apparently have little concept of what the words "peer-reviewed publication" imply. And I do not even know where to begin to try to understand what

"You are otherwise obfuscating calorie burn statistics that have nothing to do with variation and everything to do with containing the observation to one study. There are plenty of 'peer reviewed' research on specific psychiatric drugs, very few of which point out their hazardous long term effects."

is supposed to mean or be a reference to.

If I wasn't married I'd marry melkor based on this thread alone.

Original Post by nameless_shape_shifter:

Original Post by octo-luv:

He doesn't know everything. That's not to say he knows nothing, he obviously knows a great deal and it has been successful for himself, but this does not mean it is going to be successful for you. As I have stated before, I am 9% body fat, I dropped from 13% within 2 months by simply adding 90 minutes of cardio to my regiment weekly. That is, approximately 17-20 minutes of cardio to my regiment every other day, which adds to about 4 or 5 times weekly, depending on how the days are broken up.

I added this to my previously existing regiment, which consisted of resistance bands/ (30 minutes), endurance, yoga (25 minutes) and a basic ab work (20 minutes) out with some pilates (25 minutes) thrown in for variation. 

im not arguing with what you are saying. your first point, yes, melkor doesn't know everything. with that said, he has actually helped me fine tweak my routines for the last several months. that rffl plan he introduced me to did wonders as far as results & how i felt. but that's just my experience, im sure if you ask around you might find others who can say the same thing. and im not saying any of this to be like 'ooo melkor i wanna marry you' like some of these nutty people around here (who can take a teasing with good humour)

on your other point, um i've tried many programs. i've been into exercising from a very young age. and my initial point was that since getting interested in exercising, as a female, i & others have had the constant drilling of light weights/hi reps & cardio without such great results. the only thing is there are some of us, who, once we focused less on cardio & basically put away those light weights, got some pretty darn good results. sure you know some women that put on muscle easily...well, most that i know dont. and as a woman i personally know its hard.