Age: 26 Weight: 245 pounds Wide body frame Height: 6 ft
I do 4 hours on the elliptical at a low steady state to burn a little over 500 calories per hr with 15-30 min rest in between 1 hr for joints. I’m concerned about low metabolism and less fat adaptation if I continue. I see a lot of articles with “too much cardio will ruin fat loss.” Is that true if you do too much cardio? Should I mix it with lifting weights instead? Thank you
Make sure you do include strength training. Muscle is very high maintenance for the body to keep, if you are not using it..you are losing it. You don’t have to go for broke but I would mix some high rep/low weight and low rep/higher weight in. Bench, military press, leg press or squats, deadlift and rows and you pretty much hit the entire body.
IMO cardio is the worst way to go to lose weight or fat but then again guys like Eric the electric bike all day and they can lose up to 5000 calories no problems.
The problem with this is that you need a lot of energy to do cardio and also motivation and time.
Maintaining a calorie deficit is already hard enough as it is and IMO good enough for weight loss.
Eating less = caloric deficit, you simply take away stuff rather then add in cardio which takes time and effort, effort that could be spent lifting and doing basically anything else then cardio.
The more you do cardio the hungrier you get which was the case for me, I can easily overeat 3000 calories VS 500 to 1000 calories of cardio meanwhile if I do no cardio I can get under 1000 calories a day. It depends on personal preference but cardio makes me way too hungry.
You can’t mess up your metabolism. It’s absolute nonsense. There’s very few people born in this world that do have a low metabolism and that is directly linked to their parents starving while pregnant. It was called the Dutch hunger effect. Metabolism while complicated is fairly simple to understand. The bigger your mass the higher your metabolism is. So if you are 245lbs in order to maintain that you need 2450 calories. Doesn’t matter if it’s muscle or fat. The basic rate is 10 calories per pound. If your 160lbs than you need 1600 calories to maintain. So as you lose mass you need less and less maintenance. Your metabolism same but you require less energy to do things. Typically people will only do a 500 calorie deficit to drop 1lb a week. Then they plateau. They plateaued because as you can see. If your 245 and need 2450 to maintain. If you drop 500 and only eat 1900. You’ll plateau at 190lbs. You then would need to drop another 500 calories off that 1900 to drop 1lb a week. So you’d be eating 1400 calories. This is why people get metabolism wrong. You can supplement exercise but only up to a certain point. Typically an xtra 1000 calories a day can be exercised off. After that, the body starts to shut down systems. So for instance, you could be burning 1500 calories a day exercising but eventually you’ll get sick. One aspect of this sickness is known as overtraining. So to answer your question directly. No you can’t do as much cardio as you want to run a calorie deficit because you will eventually get sick. If your goal is 160lbs. Simply get used to eating 1600 calories a day until your 160lbs. Once your reach that goal. If your like where you are then simply watch what you eat and see how fast your losing. If you’re exercising and eating a 1600 calorie diet at 160lbs and you’re still losing 1lb a week. Than you know you can eat 2100 calories a day to maintain. Which is basically a 2,000 calorie a day diet and allowing for a couple of deserts once or twice a week.
I dont think it’s effective. I blacked out once. Reason is because it doesnt help grow muscles. But increased metabolism. Four hours? Wow good for you but be careful. Itll just burn what you eat…because cardio burns carbs and stored glyogens..