Lifting weights or Cardio?
Question by ℓσи∂σи cιтy ««3: Lifting weights or Cardio?
I have recently lost a lot of weight, but I still have to lose about 20 pounds. My results are starting to slow down in speed (taking longer to lose weight). I do heavy cardio three times a week and light cardio every day, and I was wondering if weight lifting will help burn fat, or if the fitness myth that muscle will build under the fat is true…
So should I lift weights too, or will it build muscle under my fat and make me look fatter??
🙂
Best answer:
Answer by Jeff K
Absolutely need to lift.. muscle speeds up your metabolism, which burns fat. Muscle will build under fat, for problem areas like the stomach, but just keep losing fat and it won’t be a problem. The overall benefits are worth 10X more than not lifting weights.
Your body needs a specific amount of calories every day to function. This is called your BMI or Body Mass Index. That will tell you the amount of calories you need for every day living… BEFORE doing any exercising. It’s just the normal amount of calories your body needs for breathing, walking, respiratory functions, etc…Charts and calculators to determine your BMI are easily found on most health and diet sites.
If you exercise too, you have to add the calories burned by that exercise your BMI total. This is the new total calories your body is using everyday. You can calculate your BMI, including exercise, here:
http://thebestwaytolosefat.com/calc/
Now… when it comes to losing weight, there are 2 ways to do it:
1*) I just want to lose weight.. I don’t care what kind, I just want to see the scale go down.
2**) I want to lose fat and only fat. I don’t want to lose muscle.
1*) Losing weight is much easier than just losing fat, but for many people, this is still their primary goal.. especially very obese people. They just want the scale to drop. If that’s your goal, I would strongly suggest the Weight Watchers diet over all other diets. It’s very effective, easy to do, and proven to be the best overall “lose weight” diet around, over all others. It even won the “Diet Face-Off” at livestrong.com, when all weight loss diets were competing against each other. Read more here: http://www.livestrong.com/diet-face-off/
2**) Losing fat only is much tougher, but.. it’s the ideal way to lose weight. Any time you lose weight, you can only lose muscle, fat or both (water too.. but that’s not true weight). With most “diets”, you are going to lose as much muscle as fat, and usually more. Losing “fat only” is what you want to do if you’re trying to look the best you can for the pool this summer. You definitely want to keep all the muscle you can. Think about 2 guys.. both 5’11 and 180. One has a belly with fat and the other, exact same height and weight, is ripped, with abs and looks like a walking anatomy chart. His goal has been to lose fat.. not weight. The best 2 diets for this are ‘Body For Life’ (http://bodyforlife.com/) and ‘Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle’ (http://www.burnthefat.com/). Both will yield results at burning fat only. ‘Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle’ is the better of the two.. as it will even demonstrate how to add muscle while burning fat.. the true secret to getting “ripped”! ‘Body For Life’ can be found at any bookstore. ‘Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle’ is available online only. It’s a 340 page pdf document created by bodybuilder Tom Venudo (who has only 4% bodyfat and is over 40 years old!). They also have a great member site that you can join for $ 10 a month here: http://www.burnthefatinnercircle.com . Tom answers your questions himself on that site.. instead of other sites that just give you a host of all the other members offering advice. Both of the diets encourage the same.. eating 6 meals a day (females can opt for 5) and cardio several times a week. Body For Life is a little more geared toward fat burning only though. You won’t gain much muscle.. but if you have muscle already, you can rip up very nicely. ‘Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle’ is the most work for sure, but will yield the most impressive results of any diet on the market today.
Why so many meals a day? Your body needs a continual supply of glycogen for energy. Eating every 3 hours, the food is digested and directed into cells requiring energy right then. Once the cells have received all the energy they need, the body stores the extra glycogen in your muscles and liver. However, there’s only so mcuh glycogen your body can store. Eating more than you should at any one meal makes extra glycogen now convert to fat. This is why you have to know exactly how many calories you need every day.. and why it’s so important to eat the right amount at every meal. Remember.. 1 pound of fat, is just 3500 extra calories that your body stores. It doesn’t take long to put an extra 3500 calories in your body.
What if I eat a lot less so my body can’t store the extra calories as fat? Even worse.. your body is smart enough to realize that it doesn’t have enough calories it needs for the day (your BMI) and to compensate, it slows down your metabolism, so it doesn’t burn calories as fast. And.. anytime your body is in this fasted state, it takes emergency precautions. It tries to hang on to energy as long as possible, so it quits burning fat for energy altogether and starts tearing your muscles down for energy. Muscle is anabolically active tissue, so this is the easiest place for your body to get needed energy. If
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