Another question lol😆😆😆

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shearer061080
shearer061080 Posts: 15 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
How much cardio per week in conjunction with weight training and pretty good nutrition to lose weight steadily without compromising muscle?💪💪💪

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  • autumnblade75
    autumnblade75 Posts: 1,660 Member
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    As much or as little as you'd like, I guess - Cardio isn't about weight loss.
    Pretty good nutrition could be at a surplus, you could gain - or exactly right for maintenance, or even a dangerously steep deficit. You need to figure out your own proper calorie balance for weight loss - not so much about eating kale and avoiding white sugar.
    Muscle is compromised when you fail to eat at an appropriate caloric level, and/or fail to eat an adequate intake of protein, and definitely when you fail to provide stimulus to the muscle.

    Weight loss is rarely linear, and slows dramatically as you approach a healthy weight. Eating "clean" and going for a run might help you keep your nutrition in balance, but neither is likely to keep the scale moving steadily nor should they affect your muscle composition nearly so much as a good lifting program.

    Cardio is great for your health, though. Definitely do some. I think the recommendation is 3 hours per week of moderate cardio, or 90 minutes of vigorous activity? Someone will probably be along to correct that if it's totally off the wall.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    Zero to lots and lots.

    This site intends you to eat back your exercise calories so lots of cardio would be matched by lots of food which avoids an excessive deficit which is the real enemy as regards losing muscle while losing weight.

    The downside of lots (like I do) is that it may compromise your strength training or recovery, so you could think of it as an indirect antagonist. As an extreme example my biggest cycling month this year I averaged over two hours a day so you can imagine I didn't do any leg work in the gym as legs were at full capacity from my riding. Didn't stop me training core and upper body of course.

    It's certainly not that cardio burns muscle, that's just a daft old myth.

    The other thing to keep in mind is that cardio is hugely varied. Short/long, gentle/intense, resistance element or not......
    What cardio and working towards what fitness goal would be good to know.

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