Strength/Tone vs Cardio

nfpeacock
nfpeacock Posts: 38 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Hi guys!

so I've been going to the gym for about 4 months now and until the beginning of Jan I only did cardio. The weight was dropping like crazy and I was really enjoying it. Then at the start of the year a personal trainer approached me and he ended up writing me a strength/toning work out plan. Since then, the weight loss has really slowed down, and I feel like I'm not burning nearly as many calories.
Thoughts? I know nowadays strong is the new skinny and I do see muscle gaining as important, but if i want to keep losing weight fast should I just stick to cardio?
And comments would be appreciated :)

Replies

  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    A proper strength/resistance routine is going tear all of those little muscle fibers up every single time you workout which is going to make your body go into repair which is going to make you retain more fluids which in turn will mask scale losses. I would also add that in the absence of strength training you lose a lot of muscle along with the fat...you preserve more of that muscle when you are doing strength training...so that will slow your scale losses down. Also, as you lose weight it slows down just naturally...it usually falls off pretty fast at first and then just slows way down.

    If all you care about is the scale then just diet, diet, diet and do a bunch of cardio. You will lose muscle mass though which will ultimately reduce your metabolic rate...plus, you will not have a "toned" look when you're done...you kinda need muscle to look toned and it's a lot easier to preserve what you have then to try to build more later.

Categories