Too much Cardio?

wks7777

Is there really such a thing? is it really going to "hinder" my inch/weight loss if i do more cardio then my trainer says to (that being 3 times as week for 30 min). I want to do it everyday for longer...hoping to lose faster and stay motivated (i need to feel like its part of my daily routine and not a chore). What do u guys think? or know?

hetipt01

Well, Im sure your trainer knows alot more than me. But I've always heard that we are supposed to get 30 minutes of eleveated heart rate a day. Maybe your trainer is afraid that you wont eat enough calories and that will put your body in starvation mode?

CinthyNair

You are blessed to have a trainer to guide you. Why don't you discuss your options? If you do more cardio sessions, do you need to make any adjustments to calorie intake, etc.

slowlee

your trainer may think that you may bore of doing more cardio than you have to, plus he/she probably has a plan in mind for you and wants to be able to monitor your progress on all levels - i.e. how much cardio you are doing vs. how many calories you are burning, etc.

BossyGirl

Your trainer may be right. I dont have a personal trainer, but I too, want to do cardio to increase the speed of results. I have been really working hard, doing lots of cardio and stregth training. Iv been doing this about 4 days a week, on top of having a physical job, and being a student. I have not lost weight even when my diet is clean. Yesterday I looked up "overtraining" and what it does to your body. This is what I came up with: Our bodies were meant to have the adrnaline to hunt for a animal for survival, or to run from a lion that was trying to eat us. When we workout alot without rest, our bodies think " wow! she must be in danger! she never stops moving and never rests! I must hang on to everything I got just incase"
The stress hormone "cortisol" is whats responsable for hanging on to the extra weight, even when we are being perfect with our diets and exercising alot. If we dont give our bodies a chance to recover, the cortisol levels go sky high. With me being so busy with school, being a mom, and working a physical job, overtraining is the last thing I should be doining.
I have an issue with resting. I always feel like there is something I can be doing to burn calories or to help me lose weight. What I really need to be doing is to REST! I have gained weight (almost 3lb). I cant use the lame excuse saying its muscle weight, because gaining 3lbs of muscle weight in a short time is impossible.
Ask your trainer why he has this rule, and please let me know!

wks7777

He says it will keep my muscles from building becuz they need rest, and by over doing cardio im over training my muscles, and if u dont let ur muscles build ur wasting ur time lifting and ur not going to lose inches as fast....it just doesnt make sense to me cuz people who are runners that run miles and miles a day...they lose weight really fast...ugh i guess i will do it his way!

Azdak

Your trainer may be right. I dont have a personal trainer, but I too, want to do cardio to increase the speed of results. I have been really working hard, doing lots of cardio and stregth training. Iv been doing this about 4 days a week, on top of having a physical job, and being a student. I have not lost weight even when my diet is clean. Yesterday I looked up "overtraining" and what it does to your body. This is what I came up with: Our bodies were meant to have the adrnaline to hunt for a animal for survival, or to run from a lion that was trying to eat us. When we workout alot without rest, our bodies think " wow! she must be in danger! she never stops moving and never rests! I must hang on to everything I got just incase"
The stress hormone "cortisol" is whats responsable for hanging on to the extra weight, even when we are being perfect with our diets and exercising alot. If we dont give our bodies a chance to recover, the cortisol levels go sky high. With me being so busy with school, being a mom, and working a physical job, overtraining is the last thing I should be doining.
I have an issue with resting. I always feel like there is something I can be doing to burn calories or to help me lose weight. What I really need to be doing is to REST! I have gained weight (almost 3lb). I cant use the lame excuse saying its muscle weight, because gaining 3lbs of muscle weight in a short time is impossible.
Ask your trainer why he has this rule, and please let me know!

All too often, fitness people make two consistent mistakes when trying to explain physical processes. They either grossly oversimplify a complex process, focusing on one small isolated part (i.e. cortisol) and making it sound like that is the only factor involved, or they look at one physiological response (e.g. "fight or flight") and conclude that it is responsible for another unrelated result (increased abdominal fat) without ever testing to see if that is indeed true.

Here is an excerpt from an article by a PhD pharmacist which gives a more balanced overview:

"The message has gotten across that glucocorticoids are involved in all obesity. And there is a lot of common talk about the role of stress in increasing glucocorticoids," says Malcolm Low, M.D., Ph.D., a senior scientist and associate director in the OHSU Center for the Study of Weight Regulation and Associated Disorders. "It seems to make sense: There is a lot of stress today, and obesity is up. But when you look at the facts, it is not as clear." Low notes, “There are multiple controls in our body that regulate body weight and appetite. Glucocorticoids are clearly involved in control of body weight. But it is not the only hormone involved. There are multiple systems involved in the brain and outside the brain that regulate how much fat we are going to have and how much appetite. There is no simple answer to treating obesity."

Marci Gluck, Ph.D., of the New York Obesity Research Center at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital and Columbia University, studies the complicated relationship between cortisol, stress, and weight gain. "Most scientists agree that it is not a simple one-to-one relationship between cortisol and weight gain," she says. "There are so many different peptides and hormones involved. Cortisol might not be the primary one."

Based on a review of literature addressing obesity and cortisol status, the two most integral lab parameters to assess systemic cortisol status and its relationship to obesity is measurement of daily cortisol production rate (CPR) and measurement of 24-hour mean plasma cortisol concentrations.4-7 Thus far, few studies have utilized these parameters for measurement of cortisol concentration in obesity, and of the studies that have been done using these parameters, none of these publications has reported elevated plasma cortisol concentrations in obese individuals.7, 9-11

However, recent reports have suggested that a state of elevated cortisol levels in fat tissue cells without elevated cortisol levels in the blood may exist in obesity.4 Yet, these findings are inconsistent. It is possible that high levels of cortisol within the cells, such as in fat cells, may play a causative role in obesity, but this possibility requires further investigation.