Looking to drop inches

GothyFaery

I honestly don't care if I lose any more weight or not but I'd like to shave a few more inches off and be generally a little leaner. What's the best way to go about this?

Currently I'm eating around maintenance. I don't log regularly anymore but I still weigh and measure my food and my weight is usually pretty steady. I jog twice a week and run stairs 2-3 times a week. I was doing SL5x5 regularly 6 or so months ago but progressive lifting bores the crap out of me so I switched to more cardio based workouts.

I think I'm really just hoping someone will tell me I can lean out without have to go back to progressive lifting but also without having to go back to cutting calories and logging religiously. Which I know isn't going to happen. Is there a happy medium in there somewhere?

Can I have my cake and eat it too??

galgenstrick

To be completely honest. The best way is to progressively lift and eat in a deficit......

I'm guess by "leaner" you want to lose fat and be more "toned" This can't be done by doing a bunch of cardio. Cardio is going to burn away your muscle and you'll never get that "toned" look without resistance training. The fact is, if you don't want to be skinny fat, you need to do resistance training. If you just want to lose overall inches, but don't care if you look exactly like you do now, just smaller, then keep doing cardio and eat a little less to lose weight.

GothyFaery

That's pretty much what I was thinking but just hoped maybe there was something else that would get me where I wanted to be. I enjoy cardio so much more than progressive lifting but lifting is going to give me the body I want.

robininfl

Yoga added muscle mass for me. If you are coming from light cardio, you can definitely add muscle and strength using only bodyweight exercises. Lifting yourself is lifting weight, until you get so strong that you need to lift more than that. If you get bored easily, or like me, need to stop thinking and just work out, then any yoga class that keeps you moving and has music might be good; or a strength and stretch class somewhere, done to music; push-ups, pull-ups, hip thrusts on one leg, calf raises on one leg, jumping, squats, there are activities that build more muscle than cardio, but don't involve weights.

You can get lean on just cardio, absolutely, just eat less and keep on doing what you enjoy. Your body will burn off the fat. I saw lots of ladies get slim with Jazzercise, all sorts of body types. But if you want the more shapely legs and butt, and the nice arms, most of us do have to do strength training of some sort to get them.

rileyes

Circuit training can give you the results. You just have to progressively increase resistance. You could try supersetting a compound lift with a plyometrics move for added strength/power.