Beginner weight loss questions

[Rubixz]

Since early February I've been going on a weight loss journey in an attemt to better my overall health, and also get into some sort of "beach shape" for this summer. After nearly three months of a somewhat strict diet (high in vegetable and whole grains, no red meat/refined grains etc.) and cardio 4x a week, ive seen satisfying results, going from about 242 lbs to 204. The first few weeks of my diet, i saw very quick results, literally losing a pound or two every day, but I have since plateued and am seeing slower, but still somewhat steady results (a few lbs a week or so). That being said, I have a few basic questions which I hope will allow me to continue to see results as I work towards my goals. Some of these questions may be somewhat trivial and have little affect on weight loss, but I'm just trying to get the best results possible.

1. When is the best time to do cardio? Is it better to get it out of the eay early in the morning, or at night. Does the time of exercise have an affect on your metabolism for the rest of the day?

2. If doing cardio later at night, is it reccomended to eat dinner first, then after waiting 30-45+ minutes do the cardio, or is it better to exercise first then eat a meal after exercising.

3. While doing cardio (I use an eliptical) what is more important, high endurance for a shorter period, or perhaps lower endurance for a longer period. I usually spend 30 minutes at about a 7/10 endurance and burn 600-650 cal. Would it be more beneficial to do maybe 45 minutes at a 5/10 endurance etc.?

4. Now that I've been doing cardio for a few months, i plan to begin working other forms of exercise into my routine, such as light weight lifting/legs/back lifting etc. Any reccomendations for a lifting routine I can adopt which will allow me to continue to burn the fat and gain some muscle?

Any tips/responses are greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[Deleted]

Remember to not work out too much in the beginning, it's not very good when you start diet. Can't really advice about exercises because i i was only on diet (there were some minor exercises like bicycle or just simple walk).

[Armatus]

1. As far as I know, it doesn't matter what time you specifically exercise. I personally love exercising in the morning because it gets me awake and moving, and the release of endorphins typically puts me in a good mood which makes the rest of my day seem so much better.

2. I wouldn't ever eat a full meal after 7:00pm. I would recommend eating a balanced meal and then doing your cardio later. You can always help recover by having a small protein after you exercise, but I wouldn't ingest anything after 10:00pm but water.

3. For the best results that I have seen, I would recommend high intensity interval training. Warm up for a few minutes, set the intensity up and crush it for 60 secs, 90secs, 120 secs, etc. (work your way up, if you need to start this week only going 60secs at a time, next week go for 65 secs) then slow down and do a slight recovery for time and a half of what your intense stage was (60sec intense, 90 recovery.) Repeat for 20 minutes and work your way up. Remember to warm up and cool down at the end of your workout.

4. Do you go to a gym or are you going to be working out at home? Have you ever lifted weights before or would it be completely new to you? Personally, if you are interested in lifting, I would sit down with a personal trainer and have them map out some lifting exercises to help you achieve your desired results. You can typically sit down with a trainer for a small fee and have them customize a workout to your personal needs, and then you don't have to continue paying them unless you want them to actually train with you. If you are doing at home exercising, you can always look into programs such as Insanity or P90x. It involves a lot of cardio, but they also do muscle building exercises (pushups, squats, ab workouts, etc.). If you don't want to spend money on a program like that you can check out bodyrock.tv. There are free workout videos on there that are intense and will help you gain lean muscle as well.

Good luck and congratulations on taking the proper steps to get healthy!

[Merodium]

The first 3 questions I am not sure of.

Question 4, however:
Same questions as Armatus asked above.

Any lifting exercises will allow you to "continue to burn the fat and gain some muscle". The thing you have to keep in mind, however, is that the time you spend actually lifting the weights themselves, will not make you burn any notable amount of calories. You will of course burn some, as you need energy to move your body. But compared the spending the same amount of time on cardio, it being low or high intensity, will always yield a greater net result, if you want to see loss right away, as I can see you have been for the past time you have been dieting.
The weight-loss-beneficial thing about weight lifting is that for every pound of extra muscle you develop, your body has to spend that much more energy throughout your average day to move around, when doing mundane everyday tasks, and it will also increase your "output" of calorie burning when doing cardio. That is why any permanent weight loss will have to be accompanied by some increase in lean body mass (muscle fibers).
So the fact that weight lifting during the, say, 30 minutes or even one hour you might do 2 or 3 times a week will not itself make you lose any fat on that particular day, the following day you will burn a bit more energy throughout your day, because of the increased musclemass.
Thats the basic idea.

Depending on your bodytype, though, you should start out very slowly, depending on the level of your overweight. Because the majority of size gains you will experience usually come within the first year, with proper training, you could get stretch marks across major muscle regions, and even minor ones, like legs and arms, because the muscles grow quickly, and with the fat still there, the skin will have to stretch.
So start slowly, and start out with the biggest muscle regions; thighs, abdominal and your back. Arms, neck, lower legs, you can do later.

[Rubixz]

I am working from home with some equipment. I have a bench with some freewieghts/hand held dumbells. Also, (excuse the description, i dont know the name of the machine) the machine where you sit on the end of the bench and reach upwards to grab the bar and pull down with weights/tension, and a pull-up bar. I've never really formally lifted weights for any substantial amount of time, but I have moderate strenght, i live on a farm, so its not like manual labor is an extremely foreign term.

[Puerto]

Losing fat is 90% diet. Its all about calories in calories out. If it takes 2500 calories to maintain your current weight, and you eat 2000 calories a day, you will lose weight. Plain and simple.

Cardio is not needed... but it does help. I lost about 15 pounds.. going from 185 to 175 just lifting and eating under maintenance... no cardio what so ever.

As far as gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time, its almost nearly impossible. Your body needs calories (plus a good amount of protein) to gain muscle. Eating about 500 over maintenance with a good amount of protein will help you gain muscle with minimal amount of fat gained.

[Armatus]

Well. It sounds like you want to work out at home then. I would recommend at least starting with basic exercises then. Push ups, body weight squats, pull ups, and sit ups. People think that you need fancy equipment to gain muscle, but those 4 exercises alone will give you amazing results.

I would recommend doing 3 sets of 10 of each of those exercises to start off with. If you can't do 3 sets of 10 make that your goal. If you can do that and want a more intense workout, add weight or add reps. Or both. Make it a goal to always add more weight than the last time, or add 1 or more reps to what you did last time.

I would also recommend investing in a jump rope. It is one of the best exercises you can do and it costs next to nothing.

From your diet I would also recommend cutting back on your grains. As a rule of thumb, 1 fist sized serving of vegetables, 1 fist sized serving of fruit (or a second serving of veggies), 1 palm sized serving of protein (fish, poultry, egg, minimal red meat), 1 cup of dairy (milk, yogurt), and 1-2TBS of fat. You can have some grains, but I would recommend 1 serving or less a day of whole grains.

How much more weight do you want to lose as well? So far you are at 38lbs (amazing job by the way, congrats). Also, how long have you been doing this? Weeks? Months?

[Rubixz]

When i say grains, its not that its a main staple of my diet, i just mean when I do eat grains, I eat whole grain, not white. I'd like to get around 175-180 eventually, and Ive been doing it since early feb, so a little less than 3 months.

And i like the jump rope reccomendation, if I want to be a real cheap-ass i can just grab some hay rope from the barn and fashion my own rope haha.

[Armatus]

Ok. What about the other exercise recommendations? Do you think you could do those no problem or would it be challenging? We want challenging. If at anytime you want some more specific workouts (target muscle groups) I can also recommend them. But the most important thing to do is get your weight off while maintaining and gaining healthy muscle tissue.

[Rubixz]

Just to clarify, when you say three sets of each, do you mean for example, 10 push ups, 10 sit ups, 10 pull ups, then repeat 3 times. And also there's no way I could do 10 pull ups, I know that for a fact, would you recommend doing an arm exercise with dumbbell, just curls or something? And also, when do you recommend doing this, before cardio, after it? Or on alternate days

[Armatus]

Yes. That is what I mean by 3 sets of 10. Set a goal of doing that routine. When it becomes easy, up the weight or the number of repetitions. If you can't do 10 pull ups right now, work on it. Do as many as you can, and the next time you do the "lifting" routine, aim for at least 1 more.

If you can't do 1 pull up, use a chair and your legs to support yourself while you pull yourself up.

You could add in biceps curls with a dumbbell, 3 sets of 10 "rule" applies.

I personally do cardio everyday of the week, having 5 of them high intensity interval training sessions and then 2 days of recovery/low intensity sessions. I would recommend doing the lifting routine 3 times a week, having 1 day of rest between every session. M,W,F or T,Th,S or W,F,Su. Your body needs those days to let the muscles recover. Do cardio after you do the lifting to have your body burn off the lactic acid produced by lifting. Remember at the end of your cardio to take a few minutes do cooldown, just lower the intensity but keep moving.

You also need to be drinking a lot of water. I recommend drinking at least 1 gallon of water a day minimum.

[Deleted]

working at home can be really hard in terms of discipline. you need a big, warm room with a good ventilation. but i prefer to do my workout at a other place i have such distracting things near me as a tv/pc and so on.. in a gym there are also guys that will help you to inprove your plans and technics. as armatus said, shut down carbohydrates. add protein and fat, so that you add more protein than carbohydrates.

dont eat less then 60 gram fat a day. use "good fat" such as linseed oil or olive oil. eat fish and walnuts (they contain good fat). for protein eat fish and lowfat-quark. oh, and dont use diets to achieve your goals, they cut down your metabolism (your body get used to low kcal-diets after some time) and when you end the diet, you will gain every single gramm back!
you have to shift your nutrition completly and forever..
spread the protein: eat 5-6 meals a day.

dont use too much weight, clear form is needed. dont do too much sets. big muscles (legs, back, chest) can be trained with max. 3 exercises a day, the rest (bizeps, trizeps and so on) max of 2 execises (6 sets). at first you should do a plan for all muscles at one day. so you should not do more then 1 exercise (3-4 sets) per muscle with not more than 10 exercises.

remember, protein and fat is good, carbohydrates are the bad boys. you need the protein or you will burn your muscles. cardio you should do every single day of a week. the weight training 3 times a week (example: monday, wednesday, friday). muscles only grow when your body is regenerating. (excuse my english, i mainly learned reading it through the internet, but never get used to writing/speaking it )

[Rubixz]

Thank you very much for the advice, and your english was great! With summer approaching I am considering joining a gym, since i will have more time on my hands. Ill also try reducing the carb in take. Also a quick question, I eat all-natural peanut butter which although is high in fat, i know is the "good fat" would you reccomend PB or trying to cut that out too.