Cardio vs. Weights

Yes, do both. Also, my trainer has me do cardio AFTER weights (I always did the opposite). She said the weights get your body into fat burning mode so your cardio will be that much more effective!

Don't give up weights. Try changing it up using dumbbells with low weights and higher reps. Also circuit training is great a few days so you can combine weights and cardio to challenge yourself.

I would keep doing both the cardio and the weight training. While cardio burns more calories while you're exercising, weight training actually burns more in the long run by increasing your metabolism for up to 48 hours afterward. Plus, if you stick with just cardio, you will be losing muscle along with the fat, which will make losing weight more difficult. Keep your reps in the 12-15 range, and you shouldn't have to worry too much about "bulking up".

I just finished my first personal training certification class, so I'm going to tell you what I just learned about resistance training (weights) and cardio. You may not be noticing any difference because your body has "adjusted" to your routine or plateaued. Our bodies will find a way to adapt to anything to make it easier. You need to do a continual progression in your weight training--increased load. You can also change up your workout with something called pryamid training as well as different velocities in your repetitions. Do you have personal training available to you?

If you choose to stop resistance training, you will begin what is called detraining and you start to lose some of that muscle you have already built. Yes, weight training does bump up your metabolism so you continue to burn fat when you are finished.

Two other issues might be keeping you from seeing a stagnation in losing those last 20 pounds. You might not be consuming enough calories--your body will go into "starvation mode" and hang on to what you have. Or, you could be overtraining. How often do you do cardio and weights? My trainer is constantly after me to get enough rest and take some time off to do nothing (like a day or two). I'm so afraid of losing the ground I've gained that sometimes I border on the overtraining aspect.

Those are just a couple of things off the top of my head. I have quite a ways to go until I get to my last 20 pounds--perhaps when I'm there, my eyes will be even further opened to that tough spot. Congrats on joining MFP!

i'm no health expert or anything, and this is COMPLETELY contrary to what most people are going to tell you, but this is what i decided to do for my workout and weight loss and speaking from experience it's worked very well for me. my plan was to slim down and bulk up. i figure i gained muscle mass easily and the hard part would be slimming down, so i decided to do that first. i decided to focus ONLY on cardio and weightloss because since muscle weights more than fat, the fat to muscle conversion of weight lifting would only mess up my weight loss (ie i wouldnt see the results i wanted on the scale). so once i slimmed down to 170, THEN i would change my mfp to maintain the weight i'm at (giving me like 2000 calories extra a day) and then just focus on weight lifting.

here i am 25 pounds lighter and my fiancee says she can definitely see more tone and definition throughout my entire body and i still have 10 pounds to go before i reach my goal weight. and so far all i have done is cardio.

with that said, i completely agree with your assessment, if you feel you're already muscular enough and are focusing on slimming down, then cardio will help you see those results AND maintain the definition and tone you already have. plus you'll see the weight loss results faster because since you're not focusing on adding muscle, your weight wont be skewed by fat to muscle conversions.

i would say do both. if your body is bored, change your strength training exercises.