Do you need to lift weights when you are very overweight?

Rayman79

Alactic system of burning fuel in the body
Anaerobic system of burning fuel in the body
Aerobic system of burning fuel in the body

Exercises that match the way to burn fuel

Muscle fibers contained in the body and how they are best exercised and fuelled - Type 1 and Type II (argue over a and b later)

So, if you research those factors you will only conclude that to aid your weight loss you must do not just aerobic and weight lifting you must make sure that the weight lifted is HEAVY/low reps, Medium/Medium Reps and Light/high reps and cardio should be done at at least 65%-75% of your maximum heart rate.

Or as a trainer, who has been in the business for 40 years, said to their new client looking for weight loss. Cardio burns fat (in lay terms, plus all the other benefits for heart, lungs etc.) and weight training burns inches (body recomposition)

So, cardio burns fat, weights burn inches.

What?

What do you mean, what? What you do not understand, what I wrote is rubbish. What? what what

So, explain the reason. I would like to know. What is the rubbish part, alactic, anaerobic, aerobic systems?

Words make that sense their on own, together thrown into post, sense making anymore not.

ssl444

Sounds like your doctor has prescribed cardio for you, this will have been done for the numerous other health benefits that cardiovascular exercise provides, not just for your weight loss.

You have said that you are very overweight, so at the moment you and your doctors priority is to minimise the risk of disease, perhaps reduce medication, improve your cadriovascular system, etc etc.

Keep it simple, you have 200lbs to loose, it's a long journey. The important thing is to start exercising and changing your lifestyle. Just start burning calories, getting in a good habbit, and making a lifestyle change. You aren't going to loose muscle that you don't have whilst your body has so much fat available, so don't be scared into thinking that the treadmill is going to leave you "skinny fat". Your a long way from that and your overall health and disease risk is the important thing right now.


I wouldn't prescribe a lifting program to someone in your situation until you'd made a significant lifestyle change and made good progress on your weight loss and cardiovascular fitness. This will benefit you in the future if you decide to follow a strenght training program.


Not aimed at the OP:

Why does every thread get jumped on by "lift, lift, lift"??? Not everyone is comfortable with a gym or lifting weights, not everyone needs or wants to lift weights. I love the way "muscles burn fat when your not exercising" is always thrown in as a sweeper that pushes all of the other health benefits of cardio under teh table with one big fat brush! There are plenty of ways to maintain muscle tone without lifting weights. None of them matter if your gonna be dead in a year because of heart disease. This isn't a weights v's cardio debate, it's what is appropriate for the person. Loosing weight one step at a time, not one rep at a time.

There's nothing wrong with prescribing cardiovascular exercise to someone with large amounts of weight to loose. Say the OP went to the gym and did 4x30mins lifting per week, what do you think the results for their disease risk, diabetes, weight loss etc would be in 6 weeks? I know it wouldn't be anywhere near what it would if they did 4x30mins cardio per week for 6 weeks.

The important thing for a newcomer or someone with weight to loose is a managable program with results that keep them at it and benefit them in daily life so they will STICK WITH IT.


Anyway, rant over. I'll run off before a dumbell lands my way ;p

I disagree and agree with this, cardio burns a lot of calories but so can weightlifting, for example if you do a bodypump class you will burn a lot of calories to help reduce your weight and dependant on your fitness level and how overweight you are, you may not be able to burn as many through cardio. But obviously this is just my opinion and no I am not jumping on any lifting band wagon I am purely giving my opinion based on experience.

MissJanet55

You don't need to but you should.

This woman here is a badass: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/nz_deevaa
She's lifting heavy and (to my knowledge) has been for awhile.

Mix it up and enjoy your workouts so you don't dread it.
Cardio only can get really boring (to some), and weights only can get boring (to some).

She sure is! She is a real inspiration.

And to the OP, good luck with your plan! I'm not an expert so I can't advise you, but you may find you want to mix it up and experiment a little as you find what works for you.

MoreBean13

Alactic system of burning fuel in the body
Anaerobic system of burning fuel in the body
Aerobic system of burning fuel in the body

Exercises that match the way to burn fuel

Muscle fibers contained in the body and how they are best exercised and fuelled - Type 1 and Type II (argue over a and b later)

So, if you research those factors you will only conclude that to aid your weight loss you must do not just aerobic and weight lifting you must make sure that the weight lifted is HEAVY/low reps, Medium/Medium Reps and Light/high reps and cardio should be done at at least 65%-75% of your maximum heart rate.

Or as a trainer, who has been in the business for 40 years, said to their new client looking for weight loss. Cardio burns fat (in lay terms, plus all the other benefits for heart, lungs etc.) and weight training burns inches (body recomposition)

So, cardio burns fat, weights burn inches.

What?

What do you mean, what? What you do not understand, what I wrote is rubbish. What? what what

So, explain the reason. I would like to know. What is the rubbish part, alactic, anaerobic, aerobic systems?

Your post is disjointed and makes no sense. Partial sentences. Lists with no explanation. Reads like you copy/pasted a table but missed parts. That's the "What?"

maab_connor

i started off having over 200 to lose and i started with weights early on. i kind of eased into them. i'm very nearly to being able to squat the bar weight, and in fact, that will be my next move fwd.

i do still have cardio days. b/c i like the bike.

but the reason that weights are so important is so that you do not lose lean muscle mass.

so YES start on weights. start on them as soon as you can.

Sarauk2sf

OP: your ticker days you have 300lb to lose but you say in the post you have 200lb to lose. Could you clarify.

Rayman79

If facts aren't your thing, there are still masses of anectodal evidence on this very site as to why people should start lifting as soon as possible.

There are numerous folks on here who put such an emphasis on dropping weight and getting there as quick as possible that they lost a lot of their LBM in the process. This can be rebuilt, but I am sure each and every one of them, had they the chance to start over, would say that hitting the weights earlier and taking a little more time to lose the weight would be the path they would choose.

The path you take is completely up to you, and noone is going to hold you hostage in a squat rack, but there are so many people in the same position it makes sense to me to learn from other peoples experiences.

martinh78

I disagree and agree with this, cardio burns a lot of calories but so can weightlifting, for example if you do a bodypump class you will burn a lot of calories to help reduce your weight and dependant on your fitness level and how overweight you are, you may not be able to burn as many through cardio. But obviously this is just my opinion and no I am not jumping on any lifting band wagon I am purely giving my opinion based on experience.

You can agree with it all when I say I don't disagree with you I know the benefits and results of strength training and don't disagree with them (or the evidence).

And I am not disputing that lifting burns calories and maintains muscle mass etc. It's important to remember the other benefits of cardio as well though, and the physical difficulties that someone 300lbs overweight may have doing things such as squats and deadlifts. There are so many considerations, but tehre is also a reason that many doctors and health services prescribe cardio and not weight lifting as a starting point for obese patients.

SteveHunt113

First, you don't need to do anything if you are overweight. And, you can be overweight while committed to lifting and/or cardio.

Since you ask about lifting specifically, here are some things that might help you decide if it's right for you.

1 - Lifting does burn calories, though not as much as cardio does over the same period of time.
2 - Lifting builds muscle, which in turn helps increase your daily caloric burn.
3 - Lifting means adding more muscle, and muscle is more dense. So you may not see a significant weight loss with lifting which means you should use a mirror and take body measurements to measure progress.
4 - It is much more difficult to calculate calories burned during lifting than it is during cardio.
5 - Lifting (non-circuit) does not provide the same health benefits that cardio does (think endurance, resting HR, BP, etc).

There's more to be said, but I have to run off to a meeting.

Good luck!!

martinh78

^^Agree with all of thsi^^

Very nicely put.

notthatthis

"Your post is disjointed and makes no sense. Partial sentences. Lists with no explanation. Reads like you copy/pasted a table but missed parts. That's the "What?" "

I tend to google things I know nothing about, so I therefore prefer a list to work at instead of long half-arsed explanations. But fair point, I should have said google these and then conclude that you need to weight train and do cardio exercise.

The summary was the main point. cardio fat loss, weight training inch loss. The preamble (list) was to demonstrate how starting factors there are to balance health. fitness and weight loss or indeed weight gain without understanding the very different systems in the body and how specific exercises bring about specific results.
The simplicity of the OP's request, lifting weights when you are very overweight, the world's strongest men are very overweight but have tons of muscle. But we do not conclude that all overweight people are strong or have tons of muscle or a good LBM as one poster has managed to conclude.

Fitness is more than cardio v weights.

MoreBean13

"Your post is disjointed and makes no sense. Partial sentences. Lists with no explanation. Reads like you copy/pasted a table but missed parts. That's the "What?" "

I tend to google things I know nothing about, so I therefore prefer a list to work at instead of long half-arsed explanations. But fair point, I should have said google these and then conclude that you need to weight train and do cardio exercise.

The summary was the main point. cardio fat loss, weight training inch loss. The preamble (list) was to demonstrate how starting factors there are to balance health. fitness and weight loss or indeed weight gain without understanding the very different systems in the body and how specific exercises bring about specific results.
The simplicity of the OP's request, lifting weights when you are very overweight, the world's strongest men are very overweight but have tons of muscle. But we do not conclude that all overweight people are strong or have tons of muscle or a good LBM as one poster has managed to conclude.

Fitness is more than cardio v weights.

Ok, that makes SO MUCH more sense now. I feel like you just gave me the decoder ring.

Yogi_Carl

Would you get the same fat-burning hormonal advantages doing bodyweight resistance movements if the intensity of each exercise was such that you are working to strength reps; i.e. 5 - 12 repetitions?

Bodyweight routines are my choice for strength work and I feel the right level of soreness after a workout and would like to think I am generating a similar metabolic effect on my musculature as I would lifting. I have certainly seen strength gains and a steady drop in body fat.

Yeah, for sure. It doesn't matter if your resistance comes from iron or your own body, but it's going to be hard to get a 12-rep max set for very long on, for example, your quads and glutes without weight, and those are big groups to neglect. Pushups have almost endless variations to make it harder but there's a limit to what you can do with bodyweight squats.

If you are starting out very unfit or very overweight, however, you will get some good mileage out of them.

Edit: I take back what I said about bodyweight squats. I just remembered pistol squats.

Thanks MoreBean. I was just about to jump in there with pistol squats, but you got in there first!

Amazon_Who

I didn't read every comment in this thread so forgive me if I'm being repetitive, but there's fat-burning hormonal advantages to weight lifting that you don't get nearly as much of doing cardio. For that reason, and preserving muscle mass, it's highly advantageous to start now.

^^This^^

Sublog

Just move more and eat less, figure out the rest later....

That's what I did.

When you are morbidly obese, you need to not worry about crap that doesn't matter. At this point, losing weight, regardless of how (assuming its sustainable and healthy), is paramount.

Bobby__Clerici

Overweight, underweight...any weight....LIFT!
:drinker:

BellaFe

Overweight, underweight...any weight....LIFT!
:drinker:

^^^ This!!!

VorJoshigan

I'm not sure exactly how much weight I want to lose but it's significant, maybe 200lbs. My doctor and others just say cardio, cardio, cardio to get the weight off. Should I also be lifting weights or is that not important until an initial 100 lbs is off or so?

Which do you like better? Do that one. I personally loathe cardio, so I'm biased when I say that resistance training will produce better results than cardio.

rm7161

I'm not sure exactly how much weight I want to lose but it's significant, maybe 200lbs. My doctor and others just say cardio, cardio, cardio to get the weight off. Should I also be lifting weights or is that not important until an initial 100 lbs is off or so?

Ease in to resistance training. Start with cardio, but as your fitness level improves, ramp up resistance training in various ways to prepare to do lifting. It'll take you a month abouts to gain the fitness level you need from ground zero.

That was my tactic, and its working. Still just using weight machines at my local apartment gym and added the resistance band at home, but its doing the trick. Lifting is good too, but I see people often try too much too soon and get discouraged and quit.

Ease in.

Rayman79

Overweight, underweight...any weight....LIFT!
:drinker:

... and don't forget to incorporate lots of punching into your routine! Always keep punching!!