Lose fat through cardio first or through resistance training?
Question:
I am trying to lose about 15 pounds. However, I am at a loss as to whether I should be trying to lose fat or gain lean muscle mass first. I am a girl so I really don’t want to bulk up underneath fat I already have and I’ve read that if I do too much resistance training before I lose those 13 lbs I will just gain muscle underneath the fat. I weigh 127 (5’3″ tall) and I eat about 12-1500 calories a day (mostly healthy, but don’t like to deprive myself too much). Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
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2 Responses to Lose fat through cardio first or through resistance training?
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The fastest way to lose weight is to build muscle. Each pound of lean muscle burns about 40-50 calories per day at a resting metabolic rate. 10 lbs of muscle will burn 400-500 calories. 20 lbs of muscle will burn 800-1000 calories. The fat will melt off and you’ll end up with a lean body.
To build muscle you want to do high intensity resistance training. High intensity does not mean spending hours in a gym getting an intense workout and it doesn’t mean working out really hard so the sweat’s dripping down your face. It means doing roughly 8-10 reps with a level of resistance that challenges you enough so that it takes a significant amount of effort to complete that last rep. Then rest for about 30 seconds and move to the next muscle group. Workout out every major muscle group like this 3x times a week like Mon, Wed, Fri and then rest two days. You do not have to spend hours in a gym to effectively build muscle and you don’t even need weights.
I highly recommend resistance bands like the ones shown below. They are considerably cheaper than weights, not to mention portable. If you get the kind with the clips on the end, you can easily customize the resistance level as your body adapts. That will prevent you from plateauing and will keep your muscles challenged.
Click here for free workouts. There are new workouts posted Mon-Fri. There are also toning, cardio, pilates, workouts for teens and sports specific workouts. All of it’s free. Just create an account.
Muscle growth generally requires a calorie surplus to happen at all, while losing body fat requires a calorie deficit. Just about every biochemical process involved in fat loss and muscle gain are diametrically opposed to each other, to the point where if you have one you don’t have the other.
Beginners to strength training do frequently add 1-2lbs of muscle over the course of their first 6-8 weeks of training due to the metabolic shock growth effect from taking up new exercise, but after that it comes to a screeching halt.
It is *incredibly* difficult to build more than the average newbie gains of 1-2lbs of muscle while dieting without going completely anal-retentive about food intake and nutrient timing, which is why I generally tell people not to bother. It’s more efficient to just eat somewhat normally, do strength training to preserve muscle mass, and if you want more muscle once you’ve lost the fat, then you can eat to build some.
Anyone under the age of about 19 is still a teen and should consume a minimum of 1500 calories a day to not stunt their growth, and in any case it’s more efficient to keep calorie intake up to feed the muscle and just increase activity level to burn off the fat.