Will what I'm doing get me where I want to be?

I think I've been patient enough. Is there anyone who could answer this?

On the days you do the "low intensity" cardio of 30 - 45 minutes, what's the chance of bumping that up to 60 - 90 minutes? When you say "low intensity", what is your heart rate or % of maximum heart rate you are averaging in those 3 low intensity workouts. I think on at least 2 of those "low intensity" days, you could really increase the duration and try to keep the heart rate in the 65-70% of max HR. It's not hard to recover from 60 - 90 minutes and looks like it would fit in your weekly plan.

6-7 months a good time frame? Yes, but I think increasing to include some endurance would chip away at that fat in a lesser time frame. Especially if you could work a 2 - 3 hour lower intensity session in once per week.

I highly disagree with the idea of adding more cardio.

Tell that to the millions of runners and cyclists who are lean and mean thanks to endurance hours.

I highly disagree with the idea of adding more cardio.

Tell that to the millions of runners and cyclists who are lean and mean thanks to endurance hours.

I disagree as well...

lean comes from diet...

Scooby likes the metabolic afterburner effect that cardio work provides. ;-]

http://scoobysworkshop.com/afterburner-effect-melts-away-fat/

The OP needs to fire it up and get beyond the 30-45 minute cardio sessions she is doing. Increasing it will help "melt that fat" as Scooby predicts. ;-)

OP - gaining muscle while eating at a deficit is very difficult, if not close to impossible. Muscle needs a surplus of fuel to grow and most cases of people losing fat and gaining muscle mass come when a person is highly obese. I don't think you fit into that category at this point. As for your 1 lb "gain" in Lean Body Mass (LBM), you have to realize that LBM is not just muscle. It is everything in you that is NOT fat. So a 1 lb gain in LBM could have been additional glycogen/water/waste......and not muscle gain. A little disappointing, yes, but the good news is that you have been losing fat. Continue using the USMC measuring standards as your tracking tool, but realize that, much like the scale, there are many different things that can influence measurements and the data should be looked at over multiple data points, not just one point to the next.

Article on muscle gain: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/whats-my-genetic-muscular-potential.html

As for the three options, I would like to suggest a fourth. Eat sufficient protein and continue some form of strength training to maintain the LBM amounts you currently have. This is actually the path I am on at the moment. I am 5'2" and 139.4 lbs as of my last weigh-in day. I have a bioimpedance scale that I use to track BF%. I eat at a moderate deficit (300-600) and do Stronglifts 5x5 heavy lifting program 2x/week and take a co-ed boxing class 3x/week (this is not a cardio fitness class, it is an actual boxing class where we train to fight). The boxing class acts more like an interval cardio rather than steady state with muscle endurance build in. It is my goal to maintain my current LBM levels and reduce fat. I have seen the trend in the data support that (outside of one 3 lb jump in LBM due to water retention from a week long sodium increase) and will continue to do what I can to continue this process. I am looking to go from my initial reading of 31% to 25% or so. It is a slow process for me, but I won't push it and risk losing LBM. I'm only concerned about the scale weight to provide me a breakdown of LBM v. Fat. I also take measurements and progress photos because relying on a single tool to track progress is, in my mind, foolish and short sighted. Take in the bigger picture to really see if something is working.

Cardio can help with fat loss, but studies have also shown that longer sessions "can" reduce muscle mass by converting it to energy. Look at the differences between long distance runners and someone who focuses on strength training (and by strength training, I mean heavy sets at lower reps for development of strength over a hypertrophy set to build muscle). Runners are lean just like a lifter at a lower BF% can be, but the muscle amounts are different. Bicyclists often have a little more muscle mass than runners (purely my own personal observation), but it depends on the type of riding they do. What you do with cardio is up to you.

You seem to be willing to learn and research so I would say search the forums, read research backed articles, and then form your own understanding of what will get you where you want to be,

Cardio can help with fat loss, but studies have also shown that longer sessions "can" reduce muscle mass by converting it to energy. Look at the differences between long distance runners and someone who focuses on strength training (and by strength training, I mean heavy sets at lower reps for development of strength over a hypertrophy set to build muscle). Runners are lean just like a lifter at a lower BF% can be, but the muscle amounts are different. Bicyclists often have a little more muscle mass than runners (purely my own personal observation), but it depends on the type of riding they do. What you do with cardio is up to you.

Scooby can help you with that as well.... ;-]

http://scoobysworkshop.com/afterburner-effect-melts-away-fat/

"Its a well known fact that doing cardio everyday is the most important thing you can do for your health but lets assume you don’t care about your health, lets talk about gaining muscle. I know you are used to hearing that “cardio burns muscle” but I’m going to show you why that’s wrong. Cardio does NOT hurt your ability to gain muscle at all and it might even HELP you to ADD muscle mass.

The reason that cardio has gotten a bad reputation for burning muscle is that most often, people couple drastic diets with cardio in their effort to “cut” after “bulking” – its why I hate the whole bulking and cutting mentality. ) Its the drastic caloric reduction that is responsible for the muscle loss, not the cardio! If you don’t consume enough protein and enough calories, your body will cannibalize your muscles – a good safe limit is not to reduce your calories by more than 20% below your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure), to find a muscle-safe caloric intake for dieting please use my calorie calculator.Proper nutrition while dieting is key to insuring you don’t lose muscle mass. You can lose weight with an all-twinkie dietbut you will lose lots of muscle at the same time!"

My bad for generalized statements like "longer". I believe your statement regarding the drastic calorie reduction is more the reason cardio gets labeled as eating away at the muscle tissue, than it actually does under the right conditions. Cardio helps create bigger burns than a strength training program alone, true. Individuals (especially many on this site) fear eating back exercise calories for a multitude of reasons. This then pushes them into a larger deficit than what they have even started with. Longer bouts of cardio to get higher burns then leads to faster weight loss, but not a protection of the muscle mass. It isn't the cardio causing the muscle loss, it is the individual not understanding the fundamentals of exercise and nutrition putting themselves in a position to lose the muscle by not properly supporting the exercise with the necessary fuel. Now, taking into account that SO many people really don't understand this, suggesting increased cardio sessions of 50-60+ to get an "afterburn" when they are not eating to support their workouts becomes a tight rope act.

For example take this hypothetical person

Female, age 25, 5'4", 180 lbs, Scooby TDEE = 2214 (light exercise), -20% = 1771 cal/day.

This person who has no idea about TDEE, but follows the standard MFP calorie recommendations and set their goal to 2 lbs a week (somewhere around a 1200 calorie limit) is told that longer cardio sessions will light up their metabolism and burn an extra 580 calories per day (from Scooby link, but I would need to see the research behind that number because what I have seen from studies shows ranges topping out around 200 calories). So they are eating say 1200 calories, burn 570 with exercise, but only eats back 250 of them, and then on top of that burns an extra 580 calories in afterburn effect. They are unknowingly putting themselves at an extremely high deficit rate and will probably lose lean mass along with some fat.

My point is, that for a person familiar with the science behind all this fat loss, lean mass maintenance, information like that can be valuable. In the majority of cases on this site, you will need to educate a person on the finer points of TDEE, eating back what you burn to maintain a moderate deficit, adequate protein consumption and many more fine details. And please don't tell me that you haven't seen people who are clueless to start with eating up every tip on how to burn more for a faster loss.

From knowledge comes power and with power comes great responsibility.

Oh, and here is a study paper on after burn or EPOC. Interesting to note that heavy resistance training produced a greater EPOC than cycling, not much mind you, like 20 calories for a 40 min session, but more. http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article folder/epocarticle.html

Cardio can help with fat loss, but studies have also shown that longer sessions "can" reduce muscle mass by converting it to energy. Look at the differences between long distance runners and someone who focuses on strength training (and by strength training, I mean heavy sets at lower reps for development of strength over a hypertrophy set to build muscle). Runners are lean just like a lifter at a lower BF% can be, but the muscle amounts are different. Bicyclists often have a little more muscle mass than runners (purely my own personal observation), but it depends on the type of riding they do. What you do with cardio is up to you.

Scooby can help you with that as well.... ;-]

http://scoobysworkshop.com/afterburner-effect-melts-away-fat/

"Its a well known fact that doing cardio everyday is the most important thing you can do for your health but lets assume you don’t care about your health, lets talk about gaining muscle. I know you are used to hearing that “cardio burns muscle” but I’m going to show you why that’s wrong. Cardio does NOT hurt your ability to gain muscle at all and it might even HELP you to ADD muscle mass.

The reason that cardio has gotten a bad reputation for burning muscle is that most often, people couple drastic diets with cardio in their effort to “cut” after “bulking” – its why I hate the whole bulking and cutting mentality. ) Its the drastic caloric reduction that is responsible for the muscle loss, not the cardio! If you don’t consume enough protein and enough calories, your body will cannibalize your muscles – a good safe limit is not to reduce your calories by more than 20% below your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure), to find a muscle-safe caloric intake for dieting please use my calorie calculator.Proper nutrition while dieting is key to insuring you don’t lose muscle mass. You can lose weight with an all-twinkie dietbut you will lose lots of muscle at the same time!"

My bad for generalized statements like "longer". I believe your statement regarding the drastic calorie reduction is more the reason cardio gets labeled as eating away at the muscle tissue, than it actually does under the right conditions. Cardio helps create bigger burns than a strength training program alone, true. Individuals (especially many on this site) fear eating back exercise calories for a multitude of reasons. This then pushes them into a larger deficit than what they have even started with. Longer bouts of cardio to get higher burns then leads to faster weight loss, but not a protection of the muscle mass. It isn't the cardio causing the muscle loss, it is the individual not understanding the fundamentals of exercise and nutrition putting themselves in a position to lose the muscle by not properly supporting the exercise with the necessary fuel. Now, taking into account that SO many people really don't understand this, suggesting increased cardio sessions of 50-60+ to get an "afterburn" when they are not eating to support their workouts becomes a tight rope act.

For example take this hypothetical person

Female, age 25, 5'4", 180 lbs, Scooby TDEE = 2214 (light exercise), -20% = 1771 cal/day.

This person who has no idea about TDEE, but follows the standard MFP calorie recommendations and set their goal to 2 lbs a week (somewhere around a 1200 calorie limit) is told that longer cardio sessions will light up their metabolism and burn an extra 580 calories per day (from Scooby link, but I would need to see the research behind that number because what I have seen from studies shows ranges topping out around 200 calories). So they are eating say 1200 calories, burn 570 with exercise, but only eats back 250 of them, and then on top of that burns an extra 580 calories in afterburn effect. They are unknowingly putting themselves at an extremely high deficit rate and will probably lose lean mass along with some fat.

My point is, that for a person familiar with the science behind all this fat loss, lean mass maintenance, information like that can be valuable. In the majority of cases on this site, you will need to educate a person on the finer points of TDEE, eating back what you burn to maintain a moderate deficit, adequate protein consumption and many more fine details. And please don't tell me that you haven't seen people who are clueless to start with eating up every tip on how to burn more for a faster loss.

From knowledge comes power and with power comes great responsibility.

Oh, and here is a study paper on after burn or EPOC. Interesting to note that heavy resistance training produced a greater EPOC than cycling, not much mind you, like 20 calories for a 40 min session, but more. http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article folder/epocarticle.html

Good link. I've read a lot about it (no surprise I do resistance and cardio and have for 20 years). ;-) What fails at the link in the study is that the cardio training they cite in their study.

"Bahr and Sejersted (1991) had subjects complete exercise intensities of 29%, 50%, and 75% of VO2 max for a period of 80 minutes, and reported the greatest EPOC following the highest exercise intensity (75% VO2 max: 30.1 liters or 150.5 calories)."

Anybody who does cardio knows that those levels are all low intensity. Recovery Zone work, Zone 1 work and Zone 2 work. You can carry on a conversation in all of those zones without any struggle. I don't mind Zone 2 work for building a base and doing long endurance rides of 2 1/2, 3, 4 hours - or all day epics.

Further, that link mentioned...

Although it is difficult to equalize resistance training and aerobic exercise, Elliot et al. (1988) investigated the difference in EPOC between aerobic cycling (40 minutes at 80% heart rate max), circuit training (4 sets, 8 exercises, 15 reps at 50% 1RM) and heavy resistance training (3 sets, 8 exercises, 3-8 reps at 80-90% 1RM). Heavy resistance training produced the greatest EPOC (10.6 liters, 53 calories) compared with circuit training (10.2 liters, 51 calories) and cycling (6.7 liters, 33.5 calories). In a similar study by Gilette et al. (1994), resistance training (5 sets, 10 exercises, 8-12 reps at 70% 1RM) elicited a significantly greater EPOC response when compared to aerobic exercise (50% VO2 max for 60 minutes).

That's all well and good. But again, that HR zone used in their study for cardio only raises us barely into the top end of endurance pace work (Zone 2) at 80% HR max for cardio work (this zone is 69% - 83% of maximum HR). All fine and good, but that still puts us in the work category of something we can do without too much trouble for several hours. Moving into Zone 3, 4, and 5 where we are at the 84 - 106% of maximum HR (Zone 4 and 5 are typical race pace for a cyclist). You can get a heck of a lot of bang for the buck in the tempo Zone 3 work and doing some long intervals in Zone 4 (8 minutes, 12 minutes, 20 minutes, etc....) that are worthy of doing a couple of times per week to trump the calorie burning furnace that the heavy resistance touted in that study promotes. Again both are important, but they weren't comparing apples to apples in that study. Zone 3, 4, 5 (not to mention Zone 6 anaerobic and Zone 7 neuromuscular work) really fire up and stoke the furnace.

Trust me, I know that heavy resistance training can burn a lot of calories and fire up the furnace. But does the OP have the equipment and stamina to do "heavy resistance" training? We know she's got a bike - so working Zone 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 are a possiblity to stoke the fat burning furnace.

No need to reinvent the wheel here. We know that increased intensity in both resistance training and cardio fires up the calorie burning furnace. It's not rocket science either that the more we work out, the hungrier we get and the more we eat. ;-)

Let's let the OP speak. She mentioned...

What I want is to be toned. Not really interested in being "ripped" though I would love to have a small amount of muscle separation, just a small amount. "

Trust me, I know that heavy resistance training can burn a lot of calories and fire up the furnace. But does the OP have the equipment and stamina to do "heavy resistance" training? We know she's got a bike - so working Zone 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 are a possiblity to stoke the fat burning furnace.

Herein lies the rub. I don't know if I have the stamina to do more than the light circuits and body weigh exercises I'm doing. I don't have a lot of equipment. What I have is a set of dumb bells up to 8 lbs and the 8 lb ones already tax me quite a bit so I don't use them too often. I also have resistance bands. I have one , yes one, 15 lb kettle bell because at one point I'd been doing the 4 Hour Body protocol which called for 75 kettle bell swings twice a week or something like that. In addition to my bike, I have a stair climber and a rower. I can also use my kids' trampoline for rebounding in the summer.

Aside from any heavy lifting I had to do at various jobs I've had in the past, I have never done any weight lifting at all until very recently; like only in the last 4 months or so and it's only been since the beginning of this year that I've bothered doing it with any regularity. Those first two months I was certainly just playing around. The circuit I'm doing is the beginner one from Nerd Fitness. I've added a couple of things to it, but I'm pretty much still doing that one. I just don't know if after only two months of doing that, that I'm ready to even attempt anything heavier. So maybe 6 or 7 months is unrealistic. That's okay.

No, it's not unrealistic. You would, however, most likely need to invest in a bench/squat rack combo and a set of weights. I like hand held weights and due to living in an apartment over in Europe for many years, just had a few pairs of various hand held weights and treadmill. I used my body weight along with the hand helds to do nice circuits and tone everything up fine and dandy for a decade. As a homeowner the last 11 years, I've had a basement gym with a full set of weights and bench/rack to do "heavier resistance" training.

You said you have a bike, you could also invest in a CycleOps or Kinectic trainer that you attach to your rear wheel for indoor cycling to add to your rower and stair climber machines. You could purchase a set of adjustable handheld weights so you can vary the pounds/kg like these....




Cheap, versatile and takes up less space. Or you could increase your stock of hand held weights to include 10 pounders, 15 pounders, 20 pounders, 25 pounders, etc... of these (take up more space, but you'll use them)...




You can do lunges, squats, dead lifts, presses - all the big movers with hand held weights. I think I've got them in pairs up to 50 pounds. Somebody at your weight would benefit greatly if you can't get away to a gym due to parenthood and home schooling. I prefer a home gym and working out to save the time of driving to and from a gym anyway (and membership fees).

After all of that is said and done - you're doing great. Congrats on the dress size change and taking charge. "Skinny fat" is an issue for many, and increasing your exercise burn (be it with intensity and or duration) will go a long way to trimming the areas you mentioned were "slop" or whatever word it was you used. As mentioned above, if you increase your intensity and duration - you must adjust your eating to account for it so you are not lethargic and running on fumes (or cannibalizing your muscles).

It is difficult and very time consuming to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. It is inefficient. Your workout doesn't seem to incorporate any heavy lifting which is needed to build muscle.

How are you measuring bf %? If you only have 2 data points, the decrease ts likely just within normal variation of most measuring techniques.

I would suggest incorporating heavy lifting (lots of threads on this) eat at a slight deficit to cut fat, and be patient. It will take a while. You won't build muscle, but will retain what you have and it will be more noticeable.

Also, perhaps be a little bit more patient about getting responses. Not everyone spends all their time on MFP.

Thanks for the information. I really do appreciate it. I'm using the USMC formula for body fat percentage which uses 5 data points. It is supposed to be within one and three percentage points of being correct. I'd love to do water displacement to find the real number but there is no where to my knowledge here or within 7 hours of here that does that.

As for being patient, if you look at the time stamps on the original post and the bump, there were two days in between. I figured that after two days, my post had gotten so buried that no one would bother looking pages back. If waiting two days for a response is impatient, then I just don't know what else to say.

Sorry, didn't notice the difference in days - was just looking at the time. :flowerforyou: