Too much cardio burns away muscle!!! Wtf!

Another way to visualize it: Ever heard of a "runners" body...well they are usually very long and thin. Thats not a bad thing, its just what they do...They run, and run all the time. So like I said before, it's just on what your "goal" is to look like.

I totally agree with you and had the same problem. I lift weights and love cardio. For a long time I was tracking my food and cardio through MFP but not my weight lifting. I dropped fat and weight very fast, faster then I could gain muscle. I actually did not like the results. I got the wierd flabby skin around my hips and abs. I also noticed that I could not make it through the day with out a nap. Just this week I decided to decrease my cardio on weight lifting days (4x week) and leave my long cardio work outs for the weekends or non weight lifting days. I also am adding in some of my weight lifting calories to make sure I am nuturing my muscles enough to grow. I am always in trial and error but hope to see good results with these changes.

Can someone help me get this right in my head.
I need to have my calorie intake at 1200 but may burn 75 so I then need to take in 75 extra calories so that I still lose weight, not muscle. So to gain muscle tone not lose muscle on my belly, i need to maintain the correct calorie intake and do more weights not cardio.......is that right?? I may be confused

Thanks for that!!!!

Increase your calorie intake to 1500 per day. Do cardio. Lift weights. Be consistent. Take a "diet break" every few weeks. Do a mixture of intensities. You won't go into "starvation mode", you won't lose significant muscle mass, you will lose weight.

LOL, this is exactly what I do. I don't even count exercise calories, so "eating them back" is a moot point for me. I aim for 1500 daily, I do weight training and cardio...and I lose body fat (inches and pounds) and gain strength and muscle tone on a consistent basis.

The biggest problem with slavishly following the "eat your exercise calories" tenet is not that it is completely wrong, it's that there is no way to accurately determine what that number is.

Plus, exercise makes up only one component of your daily energy expenditure, and usually the smallest one at that.

So, when someone says "I ate all my exercise calories and lost weight" and another says "I didn't eat any of my exercise calories and lost weight", not only could both of them be correct, both could easily be incurring the same calorie deficit per day.

The problem is aggravated by the equally slavish practice of using 1200 calories/day as the "standard".

Increase your calorie intake to 1500 per day. Do cardio. Lift weights. Be consistent. Take a "diet break" every few weeks. Do a mixture of intensities. You won't go into "starvation mode", you won't lose significant muscle mass, you will lose weight.

That won't work for everyone, sadly 1500 calories is maintenance level for me, but I'm hardly average; for a normal person this is great advice.

There are a couple facts to this whole weight loss game that often get muddled.

1. When you are losing weight, you are going to lose some muscle. You can keep it to a minimum by eating plenty of protein and weight lifiting, but you are still going to lose some muscle.

2. You can not simultaneously add muscle and lose fat, with the exception of what is called beginner gains. Beginner gains happen when a very out of shape and overweight person starts a healthy lifestyle. Unfortunately beginner gains don't last that long, which is why people have such a hard time when they are struggling with the last 15 lbs.

It's fairly basic:

We need to eat at a deficit to lose weight, and while at a deficit you can not build muscle.

To build muscle your body needs there to be a surplus of calories; can you build a house without materials?

You are sooo right! The voice of reason! I do not eat my excercise calories. Seems too defeat the purpose. I am currently losing 1.5 to 2kg per week

This is about the only aspect of MFP that is lacking in my humble opinion. We don't see much about muscle building because it is so focused on weight loss. Sorry everyone, but it is a FACT that alot of cardio in absence of resistance training (weights, push-ups, etc) will burn muscle. That was OK w/ me (and I would assume alot of people on here) because I just wanted to lose the weight and figure everything out later.

Well, now is later. A little over a month ago, I switched to "normal cardio" (2-3 times a week at 20-30 minutes each), but put myself on a major weight training program. At the same time, I've been slowly upping my cals, eating much more protein, eating more carbs as needed, and focusing on muscle building/fat loss. My results are through the roof. The fat is burning off and my metabolism is insane.

I've learned the hard way that it is EXTREMELY difficult, if not impossible, to actually build muscle mass on a calorie deficit... something that often goes unsaid on this site. Hopefully, most of us will get to a point where we're more concerned with it, but in the meantime, I think a healthy dose of cardio, with weight training, and a solid healthy diet is great!

P.S. For more nutritional information and weight training information w/ regard to this whole scenario, I had to head over to bodybuilding.com because I just couldn't find it here. Its not exactly commonplace for muscular guys to get on here and explain how they did it. We have a few, but it isn't common.

As well as, if you are wanting or needing to lose a somewhat large amount of weight, cardio is definetly something that needs to be a main focus

No. You need the balance. Weight loss helps with fat loss as well and it also gets the muscles in shape for when that fat is gone.

Too much of anything is not good whether lifting weights or doing cardio. Moderation is always the key.