Fitness Questions & Answers - Page 6

On September 28 2011 08:13 Zerste wrote:
According to this article, doing excessive bouts of cardio could be hurting my weight loss efforts.

Given that I run 4 miles 6 days a week, and 2 out of those 6 days I hit up the elliptical for another 45 minutes following my run, I'm wondering if there's any other data or information to back this up.

I've been stuck at ~155 for the past month or so after dropping from 195 in the course of 3 months. My diet hasn't been spotless as of late but I'm pretty damned sure I've been eating well enough below my maintenance level where I should be dropping at least a little bit of weight.

It's quite discouraging.

Also given that the above article is correct, would breaking up my cardio into two separate ~45 minute sessions separated by about half an hour be better than one 1 1/2 hour cardio routine?

Thanks for any insight

On September 28 2011 03:49 r3dox wrote:


thanks for your reply.
i was takling about sets totaling 114.
my goal would be doing 100 straight.

i will try to do the plank exercise, thx for the tip.
any more bodyweight exercises you do regularly?

On September 28 2011 09:02 glurio wrote:
Are you a woman or really small? 155lbs i assume is already quite low. Whats your goal? (Weight wise, body composition wise, wanna see six pack whatever.)

Why so much cardio? Are you training for a run? Just keep it at one session 45 min.
Start lifting weight if you wanna burn some addition calories.

How good do you track your calories? How does your diet look?

On September 28 2011 9:43 eshlow wrote:
Losing weight is 80-85% diet. You MUST fix your nutrition first if you expect results in losing fat. There's no way around it. You cannot outrun or outtrain a bad diet.

That said, it's probably better to drop the cardio and lift weights instead. And fix diet. And fix sleep.

Gets the fastest/best results.

On September 28 2011 13:01 Zerste wrote:
Before I get started, I'd like to thank you both for responding. That way you can read my appreciation up here without having to read the following to get to it, because I appreciate what you've done already without requiring more of you.

So thank you.



I'm a male, but I'm only 5'8. 155 is within the "normal" BMI range for my sex/height, and 145 is my goal. 145 is "normal" as well, although obviously a bit lower in the "normal" range. My original goal is 145, but it's changed to getting a six pack if it kills me (not literally, but pretty close :D ).

I started off running a few years ago, injured myself, and had to stop. So when I picked up running again recently, I just jumped right back in and picked it up almost too quickly.

I've been doing 4 miles a day for about 2 months now, and I've been working on improving my pace rather than my distance. I do enjoy running and the feeling of accomplishment I get when I stomp on one of my old times or have a particularly brutal run, but my original and main reason for getting into running has always been fitness/weight loss.

I've been lifting, although not too seriously. I'm not a fan of lifting in the gym and don't have the space/funds to buy serious equipment for home, so all I have is a few dumbbells, and a "perfect push up" bar that I don't use because I don't trust the door frames in my house ;\.

As far as calorie counting/diet goes... I'm very extreme at tracking my calories when I'm not doing something I shouldn't. As in, when I say to myself that I've already screwed today up, or that I know I'm binging or doing something I shouldn't be, I just let the entire day/week slide depending on the severity of it.

Last week was my birthday, and throughout the week I've had people throw me parties, take me out to eat, buy me cake, etc. I've literally gained 2 lbs and decided it was a throw away week. As such, on Sunday/Monday I went on a major binge and downed at least 6000 calories worth of cake/ice cream/garbage. So frustrating.

All that said, when I am behaving I track calories like a beast. I use caloriecount.com, their Android app, and I look up several different sources when it comes to unknown or less than well documented food items. I overestimate if the general consensus seems unsure.

As far as what I eat, I try to eat things high in protein density to maintain muscle mass, as I realize I do a lot of cardio, and also what could probably be called medium intensity lifting. Giving that I am attempting to cut 500-1000 calories on a good day, I know that I need a lot of protein. I realize I should be monitoring carbs/fats as well, but those always seem to just work their way in when I actually do keep track of them, and so I don't monitor those as closely as perhaps I should.

I eat a lot of things like tuna, low/no fat beef jerky (I know, sodium is a killer), apples, bananas, broccoli, egg whites, protein shakes, breakfast bars, yogurt, granola, trail mix, etc.

Even when I eat out I try to be sure and grab things from the "Under 550 calories" menu, or what have you.



I've heard this over and over again, and I think that the main issue lately is that I have been letting my diet slip. The problem is that it's pretty difficult to be social and interact with friends when most people eat out for entertainment as opposed to doing something more healthy.

I went through a pretty rough breakup recently where I neglected both myself, and my friendships, and so it's very important for me to work on rebuilding them currently. It's hard to get people who aren't interested in an active lifestyle to do anything else but eat, whether at a restaurant or at home.

I realize that it sounds like I'm blaming others for my stagnancy as of late, but I'm not trying to do anything of the sort. I realize this is my issue and I need to sort it out, just explaining that it's difficult. Sort of a mini rant I guess :\

Anyway, my long term goal is to hit 12% body fat or less by next summer. I realize this is unrealistic, given that I was probably 22-24% about 3 months ago, but a goal is nothing if it's not difficult to achieve. I'm looking to hit 145 in about a month, and then attempt to use the lean gains guide to work my way slowly up in mass while building as much muscle/minimizing fat as much as possible.

Sorry for the pseudo-dissertation, and thank you if you actually read it all. Thank you twice if you respond.

On September 28 2011 13:10 infinity21 wrote:
@Zerste
You can try to cut a bit of weight while doing leangains but you won't gain much muscle mass if at all. To get to 12% bf at your current LBM, you need to be around 135, which seems pretty skinny to me. To be at 12% bf at 145lb BW, you need to add ~10lb more muscle mass.

I'm pretty new to this so I won't give specific advice but I think cut -> bulk -> cut could be the way to go. Also, making strength gains while on a calorie deficit sucks

On September 28 2011 13:17 Mithrandir wrote:
Read this A Guide To Flexible Dieting

or at the very least read this:
How Dieters Fail Diets

On September 28 2011 13:42 Zerste wrote:


I am a perfectionist. And I read both of those articles. I will be bookmarking them. Thank you.

On September 28 2011 13:58 Mithrandir wrote:

You will never, ever be able to out-train a binge. Even when I was biking 10+hrs/week I had to watch what I ate because I'm a big eater.

From your earlier description of food it sounds like your ON THE DIET foods suck. Why not work in more moderation?

Also, intermittent fasting is not a magic bullet, I tried it and experienced poor results. It also increases the tendency to binge. So try it, by all means, just realize if it's not working that plenty of people have gotten shredded with many meal frequencies.

On September 27 2011 08:56 AoN.DimSum wrote:


Is this right? lol

Other supplemental recommendations

Supplements beneficial for overall health -- fish oil, Vitamin D.

Supplements beneficial for mass gain -- creatine, whey & casein, BCAAs, glutamine, carnitine, eating a lot of food, sleeping well

Supplements beneficial for losing weight -- proper weight training and eating well; there are no short cuts. Eating right is 80-90% of the equation!!

Vitamin D is fat soluble. Fat soluble hormones when taken “regularly” average out over 3-4 weeks. So if you wish to have say 5,000 IU/day and you only have 10,000 IU pills then one every other day is fine. Similarly, you could take 35,000 IU once every week. I have currently been taking 10,000 IU per day since this article was published until now (Oct 11 2009 – Oct 15th 2010) and feel great.