Heavy lifters - Did you do it during weight loss?

Yes - Iifting has been my priority this whole time. Three hours a week of weights, two of cardio (sometimes more if I get motivated on weekends).

I have never eaten 1200 cals though...1700+ during most of the time, 2100 now (and I'm still losing a pound a week).

Nothing more to contribute - just a whoa, congratulations on your weight loss.

Codergal, that is extremely helpful. I cannot believe you can eat that many calories and lost. Every time i hear one of those stories it just confuses me LOL. I guess what confuses me is i always thought the reason i gained the weight is because of eating so many calories. Well i guess i wasnt exercising either. But at one point i did work out but ate what i wanted and that didnt work either. I guess is the quality of calories that make a difference as well. Thanks.

Just to add to what Coder and the others have said.

I am 5 6", 164lbs, have a desk job, do strength training 4 times a week and basically no cardio. I am also a few years older than you. I eat to a static number (i.e. I do not eat my exercise calories as they are already incorporated into my base number). This gives me a 500 calorie a day deficit on average (as determined by online calculators, my BMF and more importantly, my results). I have been losing approx. 1lb a week on 1900 - 2000 calories a day.

I would add another suggestion. To make sure you can take full benefit of your strength training, make sure you get enough protein. I use the recommendation of 1g per lb of lean body mass (and 0.35g per lb of total body mass for fats) as a minimum threshold. The conbination of strength training, a reasonable deficit, and enough protein will allow you to maintain as much muscle mass as possible as you lose weight.

I still heavy lift and do cardio and am on low calorie diet as well at the same time. And I manage to pull it off and lose weight too.

I'm about your age, but shorter at 5'5. I started at 160 and I'm now around 134.

I lost best at 1350-1600 plus exercise calories (increasing as I got closer to my goal), for a total of 1800-2000+.

I didn't start strength training until I was pretty much at goal weight, but I wished I started sooner.

HIIT. Google it and do it. It works

during my most recent cut phase (weight loss) I actually dropped cardio from 2 days/week to 1, and lifted heavy 4 times, up from 3. The main reason for me doing this is in a caloric deficit, I did not want to use the limited energy to do cardio, I used it to repair my muscles between workouts, If the muscles didn't have have the time or energy required to repair a large % of weight loss would have come from lean muscle, not just fat.

Cardio does not help you lose fat, it helps you create a caloric deficit. This deficit can be done by diet alone, or a combo of diet and exercise. Cardio would allow you to eat more while maintaining the same deficit as you can get from diet alone. Strength training while in a deficit on the other hand will help retain the muscle you already have, which will lead to most of you loss being fat, instead of a large % of lean muscle loss you would see with cardio only.

Yes. I stay pretty stable.

My wife eats about 1800 calories, which is a small deficit. She's strong as hell in no time at all.
The fat is coming off. She just did a 210lb deadlift the other day and a 190lb squat!

OMG i am CLEARLY not lifting heavy enough. Dont think i could do that though. My elbows hurt at 40 lbs deadliest.

You've gotten great calorie advise from others so I won't repeat. When you say your elbows hurt, what exercise is it? What overall strength routine are you doing? There are some that will be most effective for overall fitness and fat burning.

Sounds like you're progressing to me. You've lost 2 full dress sizes. Keep going.

1200 calories sounds like too little to me, but I don't know your height and weight. But there is a very small percentage of the population for which 1200 is the right number. VERY small. Yet it seems 80% of the women on MFP start off at 1200. That doesn't math out for me. Double check your required and reset your macros if needed. (most likely it's needed).

And yes, I lift heavy while losing. I also lift heavy while gaining. And during maintenance. If you're not lifting heavy, why lift at all?

Congrats on 34lbs!! MFP put me on 1200 calories. I do notice a lot of us ladies start out here at 1200. I am 5ft 9 and weight ranges from 159-167.

Sort of echoing what everyone else is saying, but your stats are so similar to mine (5'9", 167lbs, 42yo) I thought I'd chime in. You're at a healthy weight for your height now. I would definitely increase calories (1800-1900 wouldn't be unreasonable), lift weights, and not worry so much about the scale. And FWIW, I lost weight EASILY (almost too easily) at 1600 a day doing mainly low impact cardio and yoga before I started lifting 6 mos. ago. Since I started lifting, the weight loss has slowed but I've dropped 3 pants sizes.

I cannot get over how many calories you guys are eating and still losing weight. So much to think about. I just increased to 1400 but now my goal is to work my way to 1600. I have No problem eating the calories I can def find enough to eat LOL. I just need to watch what it is. I eat out a lot bc we travel a lot and even when at home jus on the go but am working on cooking more.

I recommend you get the book Eat This, Not That restaurant version. Just because you're eating out, doesn't mean you can't hit your macros still lose weight while enjoying your meals. People won't even know you're dieting when you order. Just because you're travelling or on the road a lot is no excuse. My food diary looks crazy to people yet I've lost 4 inches off my waist in the last few months.

You've gotten great calorie advise from others so I won't repeat. When you say your elbows hurt, what exercise is it? What overall strength routine are you doing? There are some that will be most effective for overall fitness and fat burning.

My elbows hurt on overhead press mostly. But in general when i do a heavy work out my knees and elbows hurt. I will pay more attention to which moves im doing when they really hurt. I know even with Cardio Insanity bothered my knees and even Zumba. I have knee straps but going to move to a full brace. I dont know what i can put on my elbow to make it not hurt. i think its like others have said my form may not be right. As for routines I do Jari Love Get Ripped, Get Ripped and Chisled, Cathe Fredrich Slow and Heavy and when i go to the gym i use the routine recommended for beginners and simplyshredded.com. They have you alternate working lower and upper body with 3 sets of 12reps to failure and changing every 4 weeks until you get to a lot less reps...heavier weight every four weeks. Im still on the first 4 weeks.
[/quote]

I"m going to recommend that you don't use the straps or the brace right now. They can be helpful, but one thing they do is slow the development of some of your stabilizer muscles, assist muscles, and ligaments. Some of the pain can just be that you're new to lifting and you've got to develop strength in areas where you were never strong. But if it's serious pain, then I don't want you using straps to hide it or work around it, I want to you get checked out by a medical professional. I'll let you decide if the pain is of the achy variety or the WTF variety. Get used to making that decision, because you'll have to make it several times a year for the rest of time.

im on a cut i weight train 80 % 1 rmax, i weight train 5 days a week on my rest days i do light cardio. 30- 45 minutes 135-150 bpm on the bike, i sometimes do cardio on same day as weight training. im still getting stronger, my bodyfat is getting less my weight hasnt changed much which is a good thing, i was about 17% body fat i reckon im now sub 13%. i may do cardio four to five days a week. most lifters say this probably too much, but my lifts are still increasing and im still achieving my goal of 10% body fat. ive only been lifting again since May which is why im probably seeing these results. ive added the cardio in recently and thats when i started to see body fat fall. same calorie deficit as when i wasnt doing cardio. this maybe that my body is burning more cals than ive calculated after ive done the exercise, or i just respond better when i limit cals and do cardio, i dunno.

overhead press is fairly unnatural movement for you which is probably why everything aches. the more you do it the less your tendons and ligs will hurt as they will become stronger and you'll find it becomes more about the muscle. Omega 3 for joints. get plenty of sleep and protein. get your split in order so muscles have time to recover. also look at secondary muscles as you may be overworking muscles without knowing it. ie on arms and shoulders day, you may have exhausted your biceps in chinups on your back day.