Should I focus more on cardio than weight training?

You should track your calories accurately for weight loss..
In your previous post today you said you are not logging your meals but using your mind to keep track..

I prefer weight training to cardio, I can see a big difference in my body shape.
Weight training also helps to keep LBM while you are eating at a calorie deficit.

Bump

I think my muscle is hiding beneath my fat too. Would love some cardio suggestions

Weight training will tend to give more efficient (time) and easier to increase intensity. Cardio had a tendancy to mean increased time and can tend to have less "After burn". I would in your case seriously consider body weight exercises. Note your legs may just appear larger as the adipose layer is reduced. It would be a shame not to use a major muscle group to help you BMR and weight loss.

Almost forgot - you would be amazed just how much a few snacks can add up. Pay closer attention to what you are eating, you are likely higher than you think, a couple of biscuits and an apple can be the difference between a deficit and maintaining weight.

I'm 5'5" and 150 lbs and I'm trying to lose 30 more pounds and they are just not coming off.

That's quite simply a quesiton of not being in energy deficit. To plan that you ned to get on top of your intake. Recording your intake will help you understand it. Personally I'm not a big fan of getting to wrapped up in weighing and measuring everything, but that's because I do enough phys to not have to get too wrapped up. My bigger concern is ending up underfuelled for my training. Intake is as much about personal circumstance, but if you do nothing else I'd recommend working to understand how much you're eating.

I used to do both cardio and weight training, but I have all the muscle I want (seriously my thighs and calves are big). I would like to get the layer of fat off and i think I would have a pretty sculpted body. Should I just up my cardio? I either elliptical or cycle for an hour a day or I'll run 5-9 miles. I also do HIIT.

When you're in deficit the resistance work will help retain lean mass, so that your weight loss should bias towards fat. Depending on your wider objectives that resistance training needn't be much.

You don't mention specifically but it sounds like all three of your CV sessions are indoors. Your calorie consumption does depend on intensity, and you can do intervals with either a bike, elliptical or treadmill. It sounds like you don't really have a handle on what you're burning as a result of the CV, the expenditure on a bike is significantly lower than when running. An hour on the bike is generally going to be about 400 cals, an hour on the treadmill, somewhere around 800. If you're doing 5 CV sessions per week then you probably don't need to do more, although you may need to increase your steady state intensity, or look at the quality of the sessions.

Generally a good CV pattern will include a long duration medium intensity session, and two or three interval or tempo sessions per week. As a comparator for me running medium intensity is a 10 minute mile, tempo is about 8-9 minute mile and highest for the intervals is 5-6 minute mile.

I would focus on logging my food to be sure I am at a calorie deficit first to lose weight. For fitness a nice balance of strength and cardio should do the trick.

Cardio, especially LISS (low-intensity, steady-state) cardio, which I have done extensively in the past, will tend to atrophy muscles as much as (if not more than) it will burn fat.

I think it's worth pointing out that you've got to burn a lot of glycogen before that's going to happen, so you're talking 2-3 hours at medium intensity before there is any risk of routinely depleting lean mass. Most people who hit that level of CV work end up having to refuel, or they burn out completely at that point anyway, so there is more to worry about than the muscles wasting away before you reach the shower.

Looking back through your diary for the past week, you only posted one full DAY of meals; and a couple days just breakfast; for the most part you don't log anything.

How do you know you are eating at a deficit? You don't.

Do you weigh and/or measure your portions?

The one day you did log, you did not eat back any of your exercise calories, so I ask how do you know you are eating enough to fuel your body?

If you are going to use MFP as a tool, you need to use all of it.

Do you drink enough water? (8-12 glasses a day -- or more!)

You need to ask yourself some hard questions and decide how serious you want to be in losing the 50 pounds.

Its up to you..

To put it simply, cardio only burns calories while you're actually doing the exercise.

If you build muscle, the muscle burns calories just to survive. Meaning the more muscle you put on, the more calories you burn just doing NOTHING.


So you do both. Build a lot of muscle to burn calories when you're not doing cardio.

If your weight isn't coming down you are not in a calorie deficit.
Really you are looking in the wrong place trying to lose weight by exercise if you aren't sure of your calorie intake. I've always been able to out-eat whatever exercise routine I've followed!

To answer your question I believe a mixture of both cardio and weights to be the best for overall health, fitness and preservation of muscle mass while dieting.

I agree with this and I will add some. I always thought I had a lot of muscle under my fat, it turns out, it was mostly fat. As I lost weight I could see the actual muscle definition and watched it improve with weight training.

I do both weights and cardio at the same gym visit if I am doing a recovery day with HIIT but make time for my Zone 3 and 4 HIIT by themselves because I can't do weights and Zones on the same day.

Get a food scale and we won't be wishing you luck we will be saying congratulations.