Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Have you ever done cardio to lose weight?

That

Better off building muscle, I reckon - muscles increase metabolism rate (need more energy to run them).


Years ago when I tried doing weights with some seriousness, and even with an increase in calories, the first thing to go was fat.

You’re not wrong, Mouser.

no.

You effectively cannot. You have to change diet. You can spend 3 hours at the gym and ruin it by common snaking. What you eat and how much you eat must change substantially. The cardio helps in many ways but if you don’t change you can be like the dedicated tankers that spend 12+ hrs a week at the gym and just as fat.

Weight loss is in the kitchen. Decided to eat healthier back in august. Cut waaaaay down on sodium and sugar. Nothing crazy just eat one meal a day and a protein bar or 2 if I get hungry. Lost 52 lbs since august. I have a bit of a physical job but haven't seen the inside of a gym in 25+ years. With that said I try to eat well 5 days a week and eat whatever on the weekend in smaller portions. I also cut booze out. Does you no favors in the weight loss dept.

You can’t out work a Shiddy diet. Cardio is good! But you need to alter your eating habits too. Take it from someone who has tried. Cut out the carbs if you really want to lose weight.

Ron

Absolutely true. You simply can't exercise enough to stay ahead of your diet, if you eat poorly.

I could eat anything I wanted doing 20+ hours of cardio a week training for an ironman.

Thing is, the data shows that doing that much cardio isn't good for you anyhow. At my current age, walking is the best way to stay fit......


..... walking away from the fridge

Assuming a poor diet with large calorie surplus over your base metabolic rate for a regular non-exercising day? It’d take a lot of cardio to offset that. Usually about 3,500cal worth to shed a pound of fat. If you were eating at your regular BMR consistently, you could do 500cal of cardio per day to loose a pound a week. Most folks choose to create the weekly deficit with a combo of eating several hundred calories a day below BMR and combining that with intentional exercise, as opposed to just relying on one method.

In my opinion and experience, it’s optimal to use strength training as a large component of your exercise, combined with shifting to a diet that is slightly below BMR in calories but heavily made up of protein. This allows the body to retain and even increase skeletal muscle while losing weight, so that most of the weight shed is fat, not a mix of fat and muscle. Think “lose fat” not “lose weight”. Again, this is optimal but not doable for some.

Truth...

A couple things. Most people doing “cardio” aren’t doing schit. You really have to push yourself. Run faster than you are comfortable. Interval train and all that stuff. If you burn enough calories, you’ll lose weight. Cardio can be part of that. But you have to modify your diet as well and eat less, or at least don’t eat more calories than you burn.

Strength training helps too.

15 to 17 miles per week, running. Exercise and limited carb intake. I'm 57 yrs of age and weight 195 soaking wet. Not the picture of health but, still moving.

Watching fat guys doing cardio is entertaining, especially when they are 700 lbs + lol.

You need a daily caloric deficit to lose weight. That can be achieved by drastic increases in burning calories (i.e. intense exercise for extended periods of time), or regulating calorie intake (i.e. smaller protions of lower calorie foods), or combine the two.

I've lost almost 50 lbs in the past 10 months by regulating my diet strictly, keeping track every day of calories, protein, fat, and carbs eaten. I also began weight training and walk 2-3 miles every day.

At my age, 55, and what I do for a living, super intense workouts or extended periods of running/bicycling aren't realistic, so the caloric deficit has had more to do with my weight loss than the exercise.

But I'm stronger now, feel better, and don't get as winded doing things. I'm in better health now than at any time in the past 15-20 years.

The keys are patience, and discipline.

Cardio can be one tool in the toolbox, but only doing cardio and nothing else would be like trying to build a house with just a hammer. I used a low carb all natural, zero sugar diet, combined with intermittent fasting, and fasted cardio to lose 180 lbs in 2 years after age 50.

I've lost 110 # in the last year,i cut out carbs,salt,sugar,all junk.
I eat one meal a day,dinner ,2lbs. steamed veggies,8oz.meat,a non dairy yogurt with fruit for dessert.I walk 6 miles a day,every day.That s my cardio.

That's awesome! I had knee problems bad enough that I used cycling for my cardio. A cardio workout needs to get you breathing hard enough that you would have to catch your breath to talk. It's not necessary to sustain that level very long at all. It's best to ramp it up and down intermittently during the workout.

Eating one meal per day has resulted in 65 lbs lost last year from January thru July with ZERO exercise. A carnivore diet of red meat, butter, sour cream, bacon, eggs, cheese, lard, etc. has gotten me there. Animal fat, animal products is where it's at!!

Now, for maintenance, I walk one mile 5 days a week. That coupled with one meal a day has me feeling better than ever at 64. Going to bed on an empty stomach improved my sleep immensely. I started this Carnivore/ One meal per day at 268 lbs. I now hover between 205-208.

One great thing about such a diet I found is that I didn't have any hunger or low energy issues even with 20+ hours between meals, and high activity levels. It's a lot easier not to eat when you aren't hungry. Carbs seem to trigger hunger for me and would almost always cause me to overeat.