Obese Weight Lifters or Cardio?

waldo56

Do both, but skew a bit more toward cardio at first.

Cardio will increase your overall exercise work capacity fastest and will increase yoru quality of life fastest.

If you get winded walking up stairs and exhausted pushing a cart around the store, to make that go away is a pretty big improvement in quality of life, an emphasis on cardio exercise will take care of that pretty fast.

As you start to thin out and move from obese to overweight, shift the skew away from cardio toward strength training.

watergirl75

I definitely do have a deficit in my caloric intake. I have done weight lifting before and I truly love it! Cardio IS much HARDER to talk yourself into, I just didn't want to leave anything out. Everyone's replies have been very helpful and I will definitely try to do both but more emphasis on Lifting

shayleac

Hi,

My trainer told me to focus on weight lifting for the first three months. Having more muscle builds your metabolism.
I did 40 minutes of weights, and 20 minutes of cardio afterwards.

For the next three months after that I focused on cardio.
40 minutes of cardio, 20 minutes of weight lifting.

Diet is most important though.

Joyride81

Hi,

My trainer told me to focus on weight lifting for the first three months. Having more muscle builds your metabolism.
I did 40 minutes of weights, and 20 minutes of cardio afterwards.

For the next three months after that I focused on cardio.
40 minutes of cardio, 20 minutes of weight lifting.

Diet is most important though.

This.
But I would always do weights first. Work on the big muscles first and don't be afraid to go heavy. Change your weight routine at least every 6 weeks. Change your cardio all the time; different types of cardio, different intensity/time etc.
It worked for me: 52lbs!

smantha32

Hi,

I have a few questions. I've been reading up on cardio vs. weight lifting. Even read some of the threads on MFP. And am a bit confused. Will someone with lets say a 48% body fat lose weight with lifting? Or should they do cardio first, lose the weight and THEN begin lifting? Most threads I have read say Lifting is the way to go and by they looks of their pictures I can tell they are very much correct however, I just wonder if they actually started out as and Obese person or just someone who needed to lose a few pounds. Either way all their pictures look amazing I just want to make sure that I am not lifiting weights when I should be doing cardio to lose a certian amount before lifting.

Do both.
Lifting will define your muscles and tighten up your skin as you go.

EDollah

Like the OP, I'm current rather obese. 7 weeks ago I was asking the same questions. I spent my first 2 weeks just doing cardio, then I introduced weight lifting. I absolutely agree with the consensus that both are important. My gym time is currently split 50/50 between cardio and weights. I'm always reevaluating so I don't know what that ratio will be next month, but for me I'm pleased with current results. I'm not advocating 50/50 though, I think the formula for the split gets more complicated with how much gym time you have available. For example, if I had 30 more minutes of gym time, it would all go to cardio. On the other hand, if I were to only have 30 minutes available, I'd probably use it on weights. Note: this is what I would do, I'm not advising anyone to do the same

TheRightWeigh

Bump for later...

mustgetmuscles1

Calorie deficit for weight loss.

Resistance training to maintain LBM making the majority of weight loss come from body fat..

Cardio optional. Do cardio for endurance training or burning calories. You can get most of the cardio vascular benefits from heavy weightlifting.