Not seeing changes - too much cardio?

ashleyrg

I am wondering if I am doing too much cardio a week and not eating enough. I workout 5-6x a week (one hour to 1.5 hours) intense sessions burning 300-600 calories a work out. I have just started doing weights along with this. At the same time I am trying to eat more food since worked out but after a workout i sometimes feel shaky. Along with eating the proper foods.

Is there such thing as too much cardio?
Should i make it so i burn less and focus on doing weights?

I haven't noticed any changes since december at all, i am starting to think I am doing too much cardio and not enough calories per day?

IIISpartacusIII

Of course there is such a thing as too much cardio. Your body will adapt to the hours of cardio and you'll need to keep it up to not start gaining weight again. You should be working on keeping your metabolism healthy. What's your diet like? I took a quick look but it looks like your not logging which defeats the purpose of being on this site. Starving and marathon workouts will do nothing more than burn you out. If you work out a lot you have to eat enough to fuel your workouts.

ashleyrg

Tomorrow I will be starting fresh for my 60 day challenge. I haven't been logging as much because I've only been logging my cardio while maintaing a good diet that I can improve on with adding more protein and cutting back on sugar. Thanks for the advice and I will keep that in mind. I was just wondering if there was a such thing and that maybe I am over working my body.

Azdak

In this case, yes, you are probably doing too much cardio. Not because there is anything inherently wrong with it, but because the program you describe does not match your stated goals.

And you may very well be overtraining--what constitutes "too much" is different for each person, and can be different for the same person at different stages in their process.

Right now, it looks like you need to spend more time lifting weights and less time "redlining" it through your cardio workouts.

DavPul

Well, you haven't really stated what your goals are so it's hard for anyone to say what you should be doing and if you're doing too much of something and not enough of another thing. But I'll highlight what I got from your post anyway:

*You are doing a ton of cardio
*You're not doing any resistance training
*You're not logging your food

The one I bolded is kind of a big deal. I sort of want to say something about short term challenges too but since I don't know your goals I can't say if it's appropriate for you or not. Anyhoo, once you have your goals figured out you're going to want to take a long, hard look at those 3 variables and make sure you're paying proper attention to all three in a manner consistent with your goal. Whatever that is.

ashleyrg

Thanks for the feedback!

Espressocycle

Well, since you don't need to lose weight and you do want to tone up, I'd say cardio should not be your focus.

Flowers4Julia

there area so many schools of thought on the "too much" cardio thinking. From what I keep reading....excessive cardio taxes your metabolic system. And, because what your body really wants to do is "survival", it will hang onto fat stores to be able to insure that goal.

So, while cardio is great for heart health, you don't need hours and hours of it each week to accomplish that. As far as just doing cardio to be able to eat more calories and/or burn fat....well, this site sorta promotes that thinking.....(not sure that really is a good thing after all.

Google around the interwebs "chronic cardio", "steady state cardio" and see what you can read about it.

Azdak

there area so many schools of thought on the "too much" cardio thinking. From what I keep reading....excessive cardio taxes your metabolic system. And, because what your body really wants to do is "survival", it will hang onto fat stores to be able to insure that goal.

So, while cardio is great for heart health, you don't need hours and hours of it each week to accomplish that. As far as just doing cardio to be able to eat more calories and/or burn fat....well, this site sorta promotes that thinking.....(not sure that really is a good thing after all.

Google around the interwebs "chronic cardio", "steady state cardio" and see what you can read about it.

You'll read a bunch nonsense mostly--conspiracy theories, strawman arguments, overgeneralization of arcane bits of research trivia--and then there is the dumb stuff.