• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Fat loss confusion

baron said:
Which ones are experts?
Click to expand...

All of us, really. I could chip in with my own anecdotal experience but that's all it would be: anecdotal. So I didn't. I have my own opinion - IOW, my own anecdote - to contribute.

Which is: Avoid sitting. Embrace inconvenience. Don't forget to count calories from alcohol. Do not drink non-diet soda. Examine BMX, which IMO is probably a good way to work the core but maybe not as aerobically demanding as other forms of exercise. The whole point of strength training is that you go till you reach muscle failure (exhausting glycogen). The whole point of cardio is to sustain a pace without failure (the fat burning optimum). Be aware that bloating - which many attribute to gluten - is a major factor in calculating waist size, even though it's just air and is very reversible.

I don't offer that up as advice to anyone. The OP's situation seemed highly idiosyncratic to me, and I felt that some other factor must have fueled the sudden weight gain, loss of weight, and then achieving a stable weight that doesn't respond to either calories consumed or calories expended.

For me a job where I had to stand up and move all day brought about "spontaneous" weight loss. That's only ever happened before with heartbreak and salmonella, which both killed my appetite.

One final thing, I like "strength training" but hate lifting weights. As others have noted, just standing up from a sitting position is a good strength exercise, especially if you don't push off with your arms. As a woman with little upper-body strength, I can exhaust my muscles just by keeping an arm raised for a few minutes.
 
baron said:
It is very difficult to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. Muscle gain requires a small calorie surplus to your resting calorie requirement whilst weight loss requires a calorie deficit. It's possible to do it by stuffing yourself with protein and eating at balanced diet at about 90% of your resting calorie requirement but I really wouldn't want to do it myself, you'll be aching and tired out for six months straight. Give it a go if you want but there's a far easier and just as effective way.

I'd concentrate on the weight loss by doing cardio, plus maybe a minimal amount of resistance training. Then, when you're close to your desired weight you can start your proper resistance training to gain back any 'lost' muscle. The good thing about muscle is that it takes a long time to 'lose' it and no time at all to get it back. Muscle 'lost' during a year of inactivity can be regained in a couple of weeks, no problem (of course it never really went away, hence my quotes, but that's the perception).
Click to expand...

There was a study posted in another thread, which I can't find at the moment, which addressed this. 4 groups of people were put on equivalent calorie-controlled diets. Group 1 did no exercise, group 2 did half an hour's cardio a day, group 3 did half an hour strength training a day, and group 4 did quarter of an hour's cardio and quarter of an hour's strength training a day.

Unsurprisingly, group 1 lost the least amount of weight. Groups 2 & 3 lost about the same amount of weight as each other. Group 4 lost more weight than any other group.

I wouldn't advise bodybuilding while trying to lose weight, but strength training? Absolutely.
 
Minoosh said:
The whole point of strength training is that you go till you reach muscle failure (exhausting glycogen).
Click to expand...

No, that's not really the point. You can do it that way, but you don't have to, and for a novice, you shouldn't. The point is to apply a stress that disrupts homeostasis (thereby triggering an adaptation), and that stress is muscular exertion. You push hard, but you don't have to push to failure, and again, if you're a novice, most of the time you shouldn't be reaching failure if you're programming correctly. You can disrupt homeostasis before you reach the point of failure.

If you have previously tried weight lifting to failure as being your normal routine, that might explain why you don't like it.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
There was a study posted in another thread, which I can't find at the moment, which addressed this. 4 groups of people were put on equivalent calorie-controlled diets. Group 1 did no exercise, group 2 did half an hour's cardio a day, group 3 did half an hour strength training a day, and group 4 did quarter of an hour's cardio and quarter of an hour's strength training a day.

Unsurprisingly, group 1 lost the least amount of weight. Groups 2 & 3 lost about the same amount of weight as each other. Group 4 lost more weight than any other group.

I wouldn't advise bodybuilding while trying to lose weight, but strength training? Absolutely.
Click to expand...

There you go, then, what I said - "I'd concentrate on the weight loss by doing cardio, plus maybe a minimal amount of resistance training." Personally I'd go for 45 mins cardio every day and 20-30 mins resistance training every other day. Did anybody in the study gain muscle?
 
Ziggurat said:
No, that's not really the point. You can do it that way, but you don't have to, and for a novice, you shouldn't. The point is to apply a stress that disrupts homeostasis (thereby triggering an adaptation), and that stress is muscular exertion. You push hard, but you don't have to push to failure, and again, if you're a novice, most of the time you shouldn't be reaching failure if you're programming correctly. You can disrupt homeostasis before you reach the point of failure.

If you have previously tried weight lifting to failure as being your normal routine, that might explain why you don't like it.
Click to expand...

Strictly speaking that's bodybuilding. Strength training tends to be done to failure with very few reps - 4 maximum. Perhaps it's just terminology but strength training is just that - training for maximum strength - which always involves muscle breakdown. Training higher reps will increase muscle volume but will not develop strength at the same rate.
 
My wife is a trainer and she's always told me that a good mix of cardio and strength training is the right recipe. She'd really prefer that you do the two at the same time-basically doing a lot of reps and sets with minimal rest time between sets, keep your heart rate up, etc. But most people hate this so she has them do some cardio, and then some weight lifting. She says the "not lifting weights" thing is the biggest mistake women make-muscle will burn calories even when you're at rest.

This is way out of my wheelhouse though, so I'm just passing on what she's experienced throughout the years.
 
baron said:
Strictly speaking that's bodybuilding. Strength training tends to be done to failure with very few reps - 4 maximum. Perhaps it's just terminology but strength training is just that - training for maximum strength - which always involves muscle breakdown. Training higher reps will increase muscle volume but will not develop strength at the same rate.
Click to expand...
High percentage of 1RM? Absolutely! As a corollary of the first, few repetitions? Of course! Failure? Not so much. It is not required and will likely be counterproductive.
 
Ziggurat said:
if you're a novice, most of the time you shouldn't be reaching failure if you're programming correctly.
Click to expand...

If you don't get sore working to failure, then it's probably good to do it. I've trained novices who can work to failure for multiple sets on their first workout without soreness. Their failure points are limited by neural inhibition, and they will gain strength rapidly through neural adaptation. That doesn't sound like the OP's case though.

You really need to be careful if you were once in good shape and have had a long layoff. Then you can do some real damage. You do what you think is a moderate workout and can barely move for the next week.
 
baron said:
Strictly speaking that's bodybuilding. Strength training tends to be done to failure with very few reps - 4 maximum. Perhaps it's just terminology but strength training is just that - training for maximum strength - which always involves muscle breakdown. Training higher reps will increase muscle volume but will not develop strength at the same rate.
Click to expand...

You're correct that bodybuilding tends to use high reps and strength training lower reps, but you are wrong about the rest. First, quite a few strength training (not bodybuilding) programs use 5-rep sets as the norm, so I have no idea what made you think 4 is the maximum. But more importantly, they are not done to failure. You do the number of reps that you program, and if you make that number, you don't keep going, you stop. Yes, you need to stress the muscles in order to disrupt homeostasis and create an adaptation of increased strength, and yes, that stress causes short-term damage to the muscles. But you do not need, and it isn't even advisable, to go to failure in order to create that stress, certainly not at the novice level. If you go to failure (and you can't even program in exactly how many reps it takes to go to failure), you risk creating more stress than you can fully recover from before your next workout. That's not an efficient or effective way to program strength training for a novice.
 
Things seem to be working! I'd post before and after pics, but I don't want anyone to lose their lunch and its still not pretty.

I aimed for 2000 calories, including the amount of calories in the protein supplements, started with some dumbells that weigh about twice as much as my bike (I remember one of the "common sense" rules of bike control was to make the weight of your bike disappear and given how I ride it, making the bike itself lighter isn't really an option, but making me stronger sure is), and I'm actually looking at sleep as something I WANT to do for my health, and I put on some handlebars with a very painful geometry that works muscles in a different way than I'm used to, but gives some good leverage for spins.

I haven't weighed myself, and for all I know I'm heavier, but everything *feels* lighter at the skatepark, and I'm riding longer.
 
Ziggurat said:
You're correct that bodybuilding tends to use high reps and strength training lower reps, but you are wrong about the rest. First, quite a few strength training (not bodybuilding) programs use 5-rep sets as the norm, so I have no idea what made you think 4 is the maximum. But more importantly, they are not done to failure. You do the number of reps that you program, and if you make that number, you don't keep going, you stop. Yes, you need to stress the muscles in order to disrupt homeostasis and create an adaptation of increased strength, and yes, that stress causes short-term damage to the muscles. But you do not need, and it isn't even advisable, to go to failure in order to create that stress, certainly not at the novice level. If you go to failure (and you can't even program in exactly how many reps it takes to go to failure), you risk creating more stress than you can fully recover from before your next workout. That's not an efficient or effective way to program strength training for a novice.
Click to expand...

Ziggurat, these 50 pound dumbbells are starting to feel lighter to the point where I can curl them 50 times and still be kind of ok. Do I still gain any health benefit by using them or do i need to go to something heavier?
 
Down to 217 pounds with the strength WAY up

gut%20lever.jpg
 
pipelineaudio said:
Ziggurat, these 50 pound dumbbells are starting to feel lighter to the point where I can curl them 50 times and still be kind of ok. Do I still gain any health benefit by using them or do i need to go to something heavier?
Click to expand...

You might still get some health benefit (you're burning calories and working on endurance), but you won't get any more strength benefit (I'm assuming you're saying you do 50 reps in a single set). You've got to go to heavier weights for that. But from your above picture, it looks like overhead pressing is going to be more useful for your riding than curling anyways.
 
Whats a good setup for beginning overhead presses?

Also, I have a lot of trouble holding the bike up on stuff like this. My leg strength is fine, and I can keep my legs however I want, but my arms just wont hold it high enough, what can I do for that?

https://youtu.be/iTCUC1GszvY
 
pipelineaudio said:
Whats a good setup for beginning overhead presses?
Click to expand...

The ideal setup is barbells, as I mentioned before. Short intro:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnBmiBqp-AI

If you're stuck with dumbells, then you can still press them overhead. I'd suggest a standing press rather than a seated press. The technique will be a bit different than the barbell press, but I'm sure you can find some videos.

Also, I have a lot of trouble holding the bike up on stuff like this. My leg strength is fine, and I can keep my legs however I want, but my arms just wont hold it high enough, what can I do for that?

https://youtu.be/iTCUC1GszvY
Click to expand...

If you're curling 50 lbs for 50 reps, I doubt your bicep is the weak point here. Maybe you need more work on your lats. Chinups are a good candidate exercise that doesn't require much in the way of equipment costs.
 
At the beach there's a set of bars for dips that I often use to learn jumping tricks, but lately I've been using them to increase strength, I finally reached 20 dips yesterday and 5 pullups and 5 chinups, I know that's not much but its way up from not a single proper pullup a few weeks ago.

With pullups and such, don't I run into the same problem where once you can do it, you don't get much more out of it?

I'm still really confused on how maximum number of something vs maximum weight of something affects your body. I went into this thinking its like guitar, where the more work you put in the better results you get, so I was just lifting stuff all day, pushups, situps, whatever, but now I learn that rest is important too, and putting in more work, might not only not help but may hurt, I'm still struggling to understand that aspect
 
pipelineaudio said:
With pullups and such, don't I run into the same problem where once you can do it, you don't get much more out of it?
Click to expand...

At a certain point, yes. Unless you add additional weight beyond your body mass, which you can do by a variety of means.

I'm still really confused on how maximum number of something vs maximum weight of something affects your body.
Click to expand...

Basically, your body adapts to the type of stress you apply. If the weight is heavy enough that you can't do many reps, then you're stressing your body with the intensity of the effort, and it will respond by getting stronger. If the weight is light enough that you can do lots of reps, then the intensity isn't enough to force a strength adaptation, but enough repetitions of it will still stress the body, and the adaptation you force is endurance.

I went into this thinking its like guitar, where the more work you put in the better results you get, so I was just lifting stuff all day, pushups, situps, whatever, but now I learn that rest is important too, and putting in more work, might not only not help but may hurt, I'm still struggling to understand that aspect
Click to expand...

It's a complex topic (and I'm not an expert), but the basic thing is that the body doesn't get stronger from lifting weights, it gets stronger by recovering from lifting weights. The other thing to keep in mind is that while soreness is sometimes unavoidable, it's never the goal.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom