running alone good enough to lose weight?

[mikeczyz]

won't curls make my biceps bigger?

[kyleb]

Dieting is the most important part of losing weight. Don't let anyone else tell you otherwise.

Cardio, however, is the next best thing.

[theblackkeys]

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won't curls make my biceps bigger?

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Yes.

[Sevenfold]

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Dieting is the most important part of losing weight. Don't let anyone else tell you otherwise.

Cardio, however, is the next best thing.

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Diet diet diet.

Haven't had much time to run, and I wanted to shed some extra weight. Have been on a 1,400 cal/day diet for two+ weeks, and am off 8+ pounds (while being fairly active). Am tired and hungry, but it's falling off fast. (From 226 to 218, 210 the goal).

Its all aboutt he calories. I'd rather give up 1,000 calories a day in food than try and burn off 1,000 running. (What would that be, about 7 miles or so? Ugh.)

When I first started getting in shape, I lost 41 lbs by hitting the stairmaster 1-2 hours a day, and watching what I ate.

Running 20-30 minutes here or there is not going to burn off the extra.

Put away the beer, write down what you eat, I repeat, write down what you eat. It's the only way I can do it, or I'll munch on a lot of extra snacks.

Starting is the hardest part.

Good luck!

[kyleb]

While diet is the most important part, you really need to include physical activity. Simply restricting calories won't work for a lot of physiological reasons, including metabolic shift.

Your body was not meant to be starved over a long period of time. It knows this. When you come off a ridiculous diet like 1400 kcals/day, your body will store fat very quickly.

You need to work out.

[tdarko]

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Your body was not meant to be starved over a long period of time. It knows this. When you come off a ridiculous diet like 1400 kcals/day, your body will store fat very quickly.

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This is so true. I quoted this to talk about cardio and losing fat b/c it has a similar concept:

This is going to sound anti-cardio and don't let it be b/c you know that I run a lot but there has to be a purpose toward your running and you have to know what your heart rate is as well.

Anyway, most of the leanest people on this planet are bodybuilders...people that swear to "never do cardio." I am also not advocating body building but just showing how cardio isn't completely necessary. The length/duration of exercise is. Cardio has a purpose but isn't for everyone.

For the first few minutes of exercise your body uses ATP-the most readily available source of energy. But your supplies are limited. After 2 to 3 minutes, your body switches to carbs stored in the muscle tissue. This lasts for 15 to 20 minutes before you switch to fat. This is very important and remember this.

When you work at a moderate intensity you are using 55% fat and 40% carbs the rest protein.
When you work at a high intensity you are using 3% fat and 95% carbs the rest protein.

You would think that the moderate intensity workout would be the best to burn fat right? This would be endurance b/c it takes longer than 20 minutes to get to this fat burning stage as well. This isn't necessarily the right train of thought though...

Just as in the quote above, burning fat while exercising signals to your body that it needed the fat, this trains your body to make more fat for the next time you exercise. Your body then replenishes your fat each time you eat and becomes efficient at building and preserving fat necessary for long mid-level cardio sessions to prepare for the next endurance workout. This sacrifices muscle and other high-energy burning tissues and preserves fat.

Short duration exercises increase the levels of growth hormone. I have read some test that have been done on a HS sprinter and a HS cross country runner of the same HS and the sprinter had HGH levels 3X the level of the cross country runner. The biggest point of all of this and the reason HIIT is so big and all the gay 80's aerobic crap that was hot for a little while is out is that the <u>most important changes from exercise occur after, not during, the exercise period. The way you exercise affects your metabolism for several days. The important changes begin after you stop exercising. </u>

Short bursts of exercise tell your body that storing energy as fat is inefficient, since you never exercise long enough to utilize the fat during each session. Carbs, which are stored in muscle rather than fat, burn energy at high rates. Exercising for short periods will use these carbs and burn much more fat after exercising while you are replenishing the carbs.

So basically my long winded post was getting down to skunkworks' proposal of high intensity interval workouts. Sorry about the ramble.

[skunkworks]

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The biggest point of all of this and the reason HIIT is so big and all the gay 80's aerobic crap that was hot for a little while is out is that the <u>most important changes from exercise occur after, not during, the exercise period. The way you exercise affects your metabolism for several days. The important changes begin after you stop exercising. </u>

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Great post. Just as a supplement to what tdarko was saying:

Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption, or EPOC

This is the fancy new way to measure how much energy is burned after exercise. Note the section "Size of the EPOC effect."

[WalkUpCondo]

HIIT is really amazing and I wish I had found it, and then implemented it, sooner. Steady-state cardio is good up to a point if you're just trying to lose fat. But you definitely reach a plateau, and if you're doing resistance training simultaneously, it gets counterproductive quick. Now I don't think I ever want to step into the gym's cardio room again.

[mikeczyz]

so instead of a medium pace run, would it then be more productive to sprint two blocks, jog one block, sprint another two, jog one etc.?

also, with the curls, i'm starting at 15 pounds doing 3 sets of 10. am doing concentration curls. midway through the third set, my left arm is about to die. is this a bad sign or should I just "power" through it? I can remove weight in three pound increments.

[kyleb]

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so instead of a medium pace run, would it then be more productive to sprint two blocks, jog one block, sprint another two, jog one etc.?

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This is basically the idea behind HIIT. That sounds great (if you can keep the pace up). Usually 30 seconds of light jogging then 30 seconds of sprinting is how it's done - and trust me, 30 seconds of sprinting is a LOT.

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also, with the curls, i'm starting at 15 pounds doing 3 sets of 10. am doing concentration curls. midway through the third set, my left arm is about to die. is this a bad sign or should I just "power" through it? I can remove weight in three pound increments.

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I have a good solution: Stop doing curls and start doing compound lifts (squats, deadlifts, cleans).