Soldato
I personally lost quite a bit of weight by simply working out with weights (some cardio) and having a cleaner diet.
Best for losing weight - long run or interval run?
- Thread starter R.O.S.S.I
- Start date
A mixture of resistance (free weights) and cardio (walking, circuits, a hobby, walking etc) is the best option.
Soldato
Cut all the crap out of your diet and you will lose weight. I lost 2 stone just by doing that and no exercise and had no loose skin etc.
Caporegime
- Joined
- 21 Jun 2006
- Posts
- 38,367
when i needed to lose weight i went on a pretty hardcore regime.
diet = intermittent fasting. nothing but water for 18 hours a day. in the 6 hour interval i would have 1 big meal and a few snacks. i couldn't eat any more than that after i really got into you have no appetite at all. so basically between say 2pm-8pm you eat your food outwith those hours it's water only. your basically just missing out breakfast and trying to eat as clean as possible. stick to water for drinking or milk. you want to avoid anything with sugar really. if you need to add sugar use healthier forms like honey, stevia, etc. all i drank was water or almond/coconut/rice milk as my body hates dairy.
cutting out dairy can give huge gains too if your body doesn't agree with it.
training regime = running for as long as i felt like doing that day. this could be 15 mins constant high pace almost sprinting for the full time like 2 miles in 15 minutes. 30 mins of running or 60 mins of jogging. it could be anywhere between 15 mins to 2 hours i just picked a speed and kept running til i could give no more (treadmill). when i first started running i did like 6.5km in an hour of walking and jogging. by the end of it i could do 10K in under an hour easily so huge progress. i had never ran before in my life. you would after a month or so figure out what pace you can keep up for how long. so i knew if i wanted to run for an hour i'd pick say 10km/h. then the following 1 hour run i'd pick 10.1km/h. basically increased by 0.1km/h between sessions until i could do it for the constant time. so say i completed a 30 minute run at 12km/h. i would then try to keep doing 30 mins at 12.1km/h until achieved then up to 12.2km/h. this keeps you focussed and progressing. every time your trying to beat your PB. it keeps you going back. doing the same run every day would get boring quick.
after that sauna for as long as i could bare whilst drinking water then cold shower then back into sauna for as long as i could bare and repeated until i felt it was enough.
i did that for about a year and i saw massive improvement in cardio and weight loss.
i then switched it up to. 1 hour solid running and 1-2 hours of weight training afterwards. no sauna. diet remained the same - intermittent fasting.
i then let myself go when i hurt my ankle ligaments playing football (unable to walk for 2 weeks) and in the past 2 years have piled on 2 stone.
i'm looking to get back into it and strengthen my ankle. the key is being consistent. once you start you have to stick with it. improvements won't take days, or weeks or a month but several months.
cut out as much crap as you can. i was really clean. i could do a 5k on an incline in under 26 minutes. if i had a night out then tried 2 days after the same run would take me 30+ minutes and it would take me 2-3 weeks to get back to normal. alcohol (binge drinking) even once every 2 months had a HUGE effect on performance for several weeks afterwards. so it's best to avoid it at all costs.
i would usually work out around 5 times a week. but i changed up how much cardio or weights i would do depending on how i felt. like i say i could spend 15 mins minimum running or 2 hours depending on how i felt. i think i was burning around 600 calories an hour whilst running which is a huge deficit.
diet = intermittent fasting. nothing but water for 18 hours a day. in the 6 hour interval i would have 1 big meal and a few snacks. i couldn't eat any more than that after i really got into you have no appetite at all. so basically between say 2pm-8pm you eat your food outwith those hours it's water only. your basically just missing out breakfast and trying to eat as clean as possible. stick to water for drinking or milk. you want to avoid anything with sugar really. if you need to add sugar use healthier forms like honey, stevia, etc. all i drank was water or almond/coconut/rice milk as my body hates dairy.
cutting out dairy can give huge gains too if your body doesn't agree with it.
training regime = running for as long as i felt like doing that day. this could be 15 mins constant high pace almost sprinting for the full time like 2 miles in 15 minutes. 30 mins of running or 60 mins of jogging. it could be anywhere between 15 mins to 2 hours i just picked a speed and kept running til i could give no more (treadmill). when i first started running i did like 6.5km in an hour of walking and jogging. by the end of it i could do 10K in under an hour easily so huge progress. i had never ran before in my life. you would after a month or so figure out what pace you can keep up for how long. so i knew if i wanted to run for an hour i'd pick say 10km/h. then the following 1 hour run i'd pick 10.1km/h. basically increased by 0.1km/h between sessions until i could do it for the constant time. so say i completed a 30 minute run at 12km/h. i would then try to keep doing 30 mins at 12.1km/h until achieved then up to 12.2km/h. this keeps you focussed and progressing. every time your trying to beat your PB. it keeps you going back. doing the same run every day would get boring quick.
after that sauna for as long as i could bare whilst drinking water then cold shower then back into sauna for as long as i could bare and repeated until i felt it was enough.
i did that for about a year and i saw massive improvement in cardio and weight loss.
i then switched it up to. 1 hour solid running and 1-2 hours of weight training afterwards. no sauna. diet remained the same - intermittent fasting.
i then let myself go when i hurt my ankle ligaments playing football (unable to walk for 2 weeks) and in the past 2 years have piled on 2 stone.
i'm looking to get back into it and strengthen my ankle. the key is being consistent. once you start you have to stick with it. improvements won't take days, or weeks or a month but several months.
cut out as much crap as you can. i was really clean. i could do a 5k on an incline in under 26 minutes. if i had a night out then tried 2 days after the same run would take me 30+ minutes and it would take me 2-3 weeks to get back to normal. alcohol (binge drinking) even once every 2 months had a HUGE effect on performance for several weeks afterwards. so it's best to avoid it at all costs.
i would usually work out around 5 times a week. but i changed up how much cardio or weights i would do depending on how i felt. like i say i could spend 15 mins minimum running or 2 hours depending on how i felt. i think i was burning around 600 calories an hour whilst running which is a huge deficit.
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Remember seeing a YouTube video years ago showing a weight lifter in decent shape, who continued his weight lifting but focussed on long distance running. The way his body changed shape was actually quite alarming, he couldn't maintain the muscle mass and ended up looking a bit skinny fat. Was shown on these forums afaik.
D.P I've noticed you saying quite a few times that HIIT carries a much higher risk of injury. Sure, I agree to an extent. But you're making it sound as dangerous as doing the cha cha cha across a mine field. HIIT can be done on a cross trainer, rower, treadmill, whatever. These are all relatively safe pieces of equipment to do HIIT on, anyone who is going to be massively prone to injury during HIIT, is probably going to be at risk walking to the shop
Of course if you run you will loose upper body mass if you don't training for it, there is a very simple reason, every 1lb of body mass increases your marathon time by 2 minutes, which is pretty huge. Muscles also require increased blood flow and consume blood sugars and oxygen, all of which is pretty bad if you want to run fast. Which is why all the pros go to great extremes to loose upper body mass through calorie deficit and very careful core strength excises etc.
If you want to have a lot of upper body muscle while doing lots of steady state running then that is no problem, because steady-state running releases Testosterone and Human Growth Hormone which both increases muscle recovery and development.
Just look at Triatheletes that need upper body strength for swimming, they are all very ripped. And I can also speak form experience, doing up to 10 hours of steady-sate running a week and little swimming by upper body has never been so well toned and defined, far more so than when I was keenly doing weights. In fact i am quite alarmed at how fast my upper body muscles are developing now I have started swimming. This may be due to the fact that my regular running is icnreaisng Testosterone and HGH that increase muscle development.
A particular rigorous exercise will release Cortisol, a stress hormone which in consistent high amounts has some negative outcomes (weakens immune system for starters). But steady-state running for 60-90 minutes doesn't increase cortisol levels, HILT does because it is a very extreme exercise. Very long endurance running, a marathon runners weekly long run (2-4 hours) will increase cortisol in moderate amounts, partly why runners only do long runs once a week. But increasing cortisol over a short term is not a big deal, so there are no real health risks from HILT or long runs due to that.
As for thyroid function, again no issues at all from steady-state cardio. the same can't be said for HILT unfortunately. 12 hours after exercise T3 levels were LOWER than the steady-state runners:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22450344
To put it bluntly, the internet has several bogus pseudo-science claptrap about steady-state running and thyroid issues that are not backed up by science. In fact, the science is clearly in the opposite direction. 30 seconds on Google will quickly disprove the nonsense from.