Even on a 500 deficit would you still do cardio?

[-SLIX-]

Yes i'm losing weight But would adding cardio help ACCELERATE or hinder LOSE MUSCLE?

[StrongIron84]

Yes i'm losing weight But would adding cardio help ACCELERATE or hinder LOSE MUSCLE?

personally, i still do cardio roughly 30 minutes after each lifting session but atleast 15 minutes depending on how i feel

i don't really count calories anymore but when i first started i did, and i just eat around the same amount as when i started, and i seem to be losing weight gradually with minimal muscle loss if any (roughly 1-1.5 pounds a week) steadily

[F.Liu]

If you're doing cardio without proper diet and post workout nutrition, especially HIIT, then you will lose muscle.

If you do maybe 20-30 minutes of low intensity after a weightlifting workout, it'll burn more fat than muscle, if any.

Also, the body is supposedly at its best state to burn fat after around 20 minutes of exercise, which you could take into consideration when working out.

[-SLIX-]

Thanks guys. Appreciate. Yeah been doing 1 hour low intensity cardio. 30 morning, 30 mins night.

[Vietgoboi]

Yes i'm losing weight But would adding cardio help ACCELERATE or hinder LOSE MUSCLE?

When dieting down, we'll lose muscle, so lose the fat quick as possible and head back to maintaining, than bulk.

Might as well do HIIT to speed up the lost and improve your cardiovascular health at the same time.

The downside to having big deficit is the lack of energy to perform & exert your potential lifts to maintain muscle. IMO

Thanks guys. Appreciate. Yeah been doing 1 hour low intensity cardio. 30 morning, 30 mins night.

Your current low intensity cardio is fine, as long it doesn't hindrance your recovery from lifting.

[zbrewha863]

You factor it into determining your caloric defecit. If you have a 500cal defecit, then do an hour of cardio on top of it, now you have somwhere around a 1500cal defecit, which means that you will lose a good amount of muscle.

[-SLIX-]

^ i agree. But 1 hour low intensity is going to burn 300 or so calories i assume. Not really that much

[Vietgoboi]

Look into few articles that Lyle muster up, better than taking advice from nobodies on these forums.

edit: forgot to add link

http://forums.lylemcdonald.com/forumdisplay.php?f=15

[Cape1]

I think three 20 minute cardio sessions per week at a relatively high intensity are mandatory equipement for everyone. Beyond that, I would do as little cardio as possible to hit the goal. If you get the fat moving on that cardio plan and a deficit, don't fix what ain't broke.

Here's what I did for my contest diet last year. Start: 3 20 minute sessions; 2 weeks later 5 sessions; 2 weeks later increased 5 minutes on each session; 2 weeks later added another 5 minutes and a sixth session; few weeks later bumped to 40 minutes a day but broke into two sessions (AM and PM). I think I got all the way to doing 60 minutes a day broken into three 20 minute sessions. ....YOu may ask why the short sessions.. It's allot less catabolic and who cares how much fat you burn in a single session anyway... It's the metabolic effect over weeks/months that you are looking for.

This is called a cardio progression. The point is: do as little as necessary to reach your goal. Don't do it all at once. Guys that come out swinging by doing an hour of cardio a day are the same guys you see doing 2-3 hours as they get closer to their goal - don't be that guy.

Hope this helps a little.

[trance__dreamer]

Yes i'm losing weight But would adding cardio help ACCELERATE or hinder LOSE MUSCLE?

cardio increases the shti out of my appetite. so, absolutely not. cardio makes it hard to control my calories. =S

[Mlupi319]

IMHO cardio is great, it may increase your appetite a lil as it has for me but i just suck it up. I would reccomend low intensity for 20-40min if after lifting weights, and HIIT on non lifting days. HIIT on lifting days i think is counter productive to both because you will have less energy to do true HIIT and you lose too much muscle, at least for me.

[bb.wolf]

I've lost the last 20 pounds doing absolutely no cardio and you couldn't classify me as someone with a fast metabolism. Keep your workouts intense, pause little unless its a compound like squats/deads/benchpress. I keep the same deficit but i dont have cheat days. sure i might go to subway or mcdonalds but i almost never exceed the amount of calories i set for my cut. (might go over 100 cals no biggie)

[goutkris]

Is it better to do cardio before you lift?

i tried several times and observed that all the pumping is gone if i do cardio after weight training..

any thoughts on this??

and can we really give our 100% on weights after the cardio is done?? :P

[Vietgoboi]

Is it better to do cardio before you lift?

i tried several times and observed that all the pumping is gone if i do cardio after weight training..

any thoughts on this??

and can we really give our 100% on weights after the cardio is done?? :P

Your right about 100% effort, but this depends on intensity/duration of your pre-cardio, is it warm-up? Should consist of 5-10 minutes moderate or lower.

[MayaRefugee]

�Let me wrap up the topic of cardio frequency this way: If I were overweight and
I knew what I now know about fat loss, I would be doing cardio every day, possibly even
twice a day, seven days a week until I was happy with my weight. Then and only then
would I cut back to three days a week for maintenance.�....Tom Venuto in Burn the Fat Feed The Muscle

[senor_mortgage]

?let me wrap up the topic of cardio frequency this way: If i were overweight and
i knew what i now know about fat loss, i would be doing cardio every day, possibly even
twice a day, seven days a week until i was happy with my weight. Then and only then
would i cut back to three days a week for maintenance.?....tom venuto in burn the fat feed the muscle

+1.

[Cape1]

“Let me wrap up the topic of cardio frequency this way: If I were overweight and
I knew what I now know about fat loss, I would be doing cardio every day, possibly even
twice a day, seven days a week until I was happy with my weight. Then and only then
would I cut back to three days a week for maintenance.”....Tom Venuto in Burn the Fat Feed The Muscle

Makes sense to a point but here's where it's flawed. Why do an hour of cardio if you can move fat with 20 minutes?? That is why competitors usually follow a cardio "progression". You work up to it. If I started with 60 minutes of cardio, what the hell will I be doing 3 weeks out from a show??? 2 or 3 hours?

[Tommy W.]

If you do cardio on top of a 500 cal defecit you'll increase your defecit and lose fat quicker the guys that get too hungry need to learn to control their appetite. 500 cal defecit and 500 cals burned from cardio is 1,000 defecit a day which is 2 lbs a week which is good. One of the problems with a 500 cal defecit is if you mis calc your cals and you really only have a 300 cal defecit you're spinning your wheels on fatloss as far as timing. You need to play around with different approaches and find your sweet spot.

[awesomepirate]

Basically, if you want to lose fat, then do cardio, even on a 500 cal deficit, even if you're training with heavy weights.

You change that if you're trying to preserve muscle or whatever other goals you may have. But if it's purely fat loss, then loads cardio is the way forward. For me, I don't want to lose what the 10 months of hard work and loads of eating gave me: a lot of mass; so I went with Mitotropin and am following that plan. My goal is to keep the muscle and lose the fat.

I have *hugely* upped my protein and am creating one beast of a deficit with a lot of cardio and big weight sessions on top of a "cleaner than clean" diet. Hopefully, a lot of the fat will go and a lot of the muscle will stay.

[dbluegoat]

lift heavy, keep muscle...deficit+cardio+lifting=WIN BIG!

[RUDEMIX]

Cape 1, great info and post!. Was this high or low intensity cardio?

"Here's what I did for my contest diet last year. Start: 3 20 minute sessions; 2 weeks later 5 sessions; 2 weeks later increased 5 minutes on each session; 2 weeks later added another 5 minutes and a sixth session; few weeks later bumped to 40 minutes a day but broke into two sessions (AM and PM). I think I got all the way to doing 60 minutes a day broken into three 20 minute sessions. ....YOu may ask why the short sessions.. It's allot less catabolic and who cares how much fat you burn in a single session anyway... It's the metabolic effect over weeks/months that you are looking for."

[Cape1]

Cape 1, great info and post!. Was this high or low intensity cardio?

"Here's what I did for my contest diet last year. Start: 3 20 minute sessions; 2 weeks later 5 sessions; 2 weeks later increased 5 minutes on each session; 2 weeks later added another 5 minutes and a sixth session; few weeks later bumped to 40 minutes a day but broke into two sessions (AM and PM). I think I got all the way to doing 60 minutes a day broken into three 20 minute sessions. ....YOu may ask why the short sessions.. It's allot less catabolic and who cares how much fat you burn in a single session anyway... It's the metabolic effect over weeks/months that you are looking for."

THanks. Mostly moderate intensity sessions with 1 HIIT session and 1 sprint session. I mostly Ran but did mix in some bike and stairs.

When I was doing 3 sessions a day, I did the bike for 20 minutes upon waking (took BCAA and sipped it while riding); at lunch I took a brisk 20 minute walk; and at night I ran for 20 minutes - usually pretty hard - or I did the stairs after lifting. On one of my runs each week I would do intervals between telephone poles (on the Cape Cod Canal the poles are spaced out with a good uniformity). Then one session a week I would get up in the AM, go to the high school track and do sprint work. This was when I was all in with the cardio towards the end. I certainly wouldn't recommend starting out that way.

Right now, I'm actually doing five 15 minute runs (AM) per week and I'm actually loosing fat beleive it or not. I'm pretty fat right now though at around 16-18% so anything works at this point.