exercising but not losing

SHBoss1673

Couple of things, first, it doesn't matter if you do cardio 4 times a day for 10 minutes each time, or 40 minutes all at once, if you are at the same heart rate, you'll have the same calorie burn. That's been proven time and time again by clinical trials.
Second, generally, mixing weight training and cardio in the same day is only good if you're doing very light weights and high reps, and/or doing low intensity cardio like walking or a slow jog on the tread mill. Why? Well because when you weight train with any significant amount of weight, you're tearing down your muscle fibers, this requires a period of regeneration and recovery. Trying to do cardio with those same muscles (even secondarily) is not going to do nearly as much for you as it would if you isolate your routines. That isn't to say a light to moderate cardio session for about 15 to 20 minutes before you weight train is bad, it's fine, but working heavy cardio before weights, or vice versa can reduce the good the exercises are doing for your body by forcing muscles to work either while depleted, or during their repair cycle.

3rd, at 17% body fat, there's absolutely no reason for you to even care what you weigh. 17% is outstanding, and I can guarantee that you have very little, if any, body fat that you can see, now if you don't have a lot of muscle, then lose skin can look a little like body fat (many times this happens around the middle), but that's something that time and a healthy diet with a healthy amount of good fats, minerals, and exercise will fix.

4th, make sure your calorie deficit is VERY small, at 17% body fat, almost any significant deficit is going to panic your metabolism, forcing it to start storing fat and slowing down organ function, you need to feed your engine, and make sure, at that %, that you're eating exercise calories, the body doesn't care whether the calories it needs are from general daily activity or from exercise, all it knows is that it has caloric demands, and if you're constantly depriving your body of the needed calories, it's going to fight back in the only way it knows how, which is to slow you down and store more energy.

Thank you! That really helped. The only thing is im doing a "challenge/contest" at the gym for body fat %.... And yesterday I gained 2%! So now im at 19% body fat which is not good at all. I was trying to lose body fat not gain...

what tool are they measuring with? If it's calipers, then 2% is within the margin for error, I wouldn't even count it. Also, calipers greatly depend on the skill of the person using them, and everyone measures a little bit different. if you REAAAAALLLY want to know, go find a hydrostatic test center or a bod pod, they cost around 75 bucks and are accurate to within 1% usually.

karissastephens

That is a lot of money just to find out your percentage.... hmm.. but thank you anyway! :laugh: