How much cardio is enough?

yulia_star

Trying to drop 25 pounds by Christmas. I'm 140 lbs and 5'3", my goal is 115 and to hopefully reduce my saddlebags.

Two days a week I do HIIT for 15 - 20 minutes in the morning, and 30 minutes of cardio in the afternoon.

3 days a week I do 30 - 45 minutes of intense cardio. Normally, I play Dance Dance Revolution. I do it on the hardest level, with the arrows moving at 2x speed, for about 35 - 45 minutes straight. I never change the song so there's only about 30 second between each song, and during that break, I keep moving (usually doing jumping jacks or jump rope, unless I have to get a drink, and even then I walk around my bedroom while drinking) Even when there aren't arrows on the screen I dance around on the mat. I jump and move a lot. My heart rate is high the whole time and I sweat so much. My legs are burning during the entire thing, too. It surely makes me sweat more than running in place or rope jumping for 45 minutes ever has. The calorie counter says I burn 1000 calories, but I know it isn't that much. I always guess it's between 300 - 500 calories, half or less than half of what it estimates. And, I also mix up my cardio. Some days I'll use my stationary bike, others I'll do DDR and rope jumping, or just rope jumping or running in place...etc etc.

So is 30 - 45 minutes good, as long as it's intense? Most people tell me 60 - 75 daily and I don't have time for that.
Also, how many calories should I eat? My BMR, including exercise is about 2200 - 2400.

EDIT: Lol, the last two...that doesn't really answer my question. At all.

bpmartyr

Losing weight is about diet. Cardio is good for you and will aid in weight loss but I can run at high intensity for over an hour a day seven days a week and maintain my weight by simply eating enough calories to fuel what i burn.

gogophers

Losing weight is 90-95% based on diet. (made up number to illustrate my point)

As for getting healthy, just do what you can, but pay attention to your joints. I don't know much about DDR, but from what I've seen, it seems that it can be somewhat stressful on your ligaments due to all the twisting and stuff.

If you really want to know how many calories you're burning, you can get a device that measures your heart rate (a band around your chest) and calculates calories burnt.

75 minutes of cardio daily is crazy. Some people do it, but most of them that do that are doing it for fun, not solely for exercise. It's definitely not necessary to do that much to become healthy. I think it's actually probably better for your body to increase intensity as opposed to increasing time once you get to 45-60 minutes of cardio.

Also, "most people" generally don't have any idea what they're talking about. I'd bet most of those people that say that have never done 75 minutes of cardio in one session, and people generally don't have the time to do "two-a-days" every day.

Helloitsdan

Try to walk 10k steps a day.

PS: All my cardio is done doing squats and deadlifts!

WilmaDennis91

I do Zumba every evening and run every morning.