Strength training and cardio advice

What’s your daily calorie intake? The last few lbs can feel like a beast when you are already small. I’m about to try to cut from 130 to 125 but not sure if it’s necessary. Just a few vanity lbs.

Do you normally do HIIT cardio? If not, suddenly swapping from a steady-state (jog, walk, bike, elliptical) to adding both weights AND HIIT in the same day will be a huge shock to the system. Better to do some simple cardio at a low- to moderate pace following the weights, at least until you get used to it, and then for less time than you normally do, say half hour weights/half hour light cardio on the days you lift, normal cardio on the other days. You don't need to lift every day, in fact best to start with only 2 or 3 days per week lifting until you get used to it.

I've done 132 to 116 (though I didn't start at 132 (rather 183) or stop at 116 (overshot goal, too thin).

Absolutely, I 100% agree that calorie deficit is the key. If you're at 1200, you shouldn't go lower. But there are options.

Yes, increasing movement is one of them. (The movement can be exercise of any type, or daily life movement.) Cardio burns more calories per time period than strength training, but strength training is absolutely a very, very good thing to include in the mix for other reasons.

Cardio exercise modality is always a personal choice, when it comes to what type is best. Pick the one you enjoy the most, I'd suggest.

But daily life movement also matters, possibly surprisingly much. There's a thread here on MFP where many MFP-ers share their ideas for increasing daily life (non-exercise) movement:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10610953/neat-improvement-strategies-to-improve-weight-loss/p1

It's common, especially if losing weight for a long time, or doing so aggressively fast, to have a reduced calorie expenditure after a time (adaptive thermogenesis). In a way, it's like subtle fatigue that reduces certain autonomic body processes (such as core body temperature, hair/nails growth rates, etc.) as well as reducing spontaneous movement (fidgeting is one easy example). We may even reduce/lose interest in certain active hobbies or chores.

This thread talks about potential for mitigating those adaptive effects through diet breaks or refeeds:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10604863/of-refeeds-and-diet-breaks/p1

I'm not saying either of those is a thing you ought to do, because you haven't said how long or fast you've been working on weight loss, or given any other indication that that's part of the problem. But there's some good info in the thread about why and how those slow-downs happen, too.

I kind of disagree about "strength training before cardio", conditionally. I'd suggest doing the one first that is your main personal priority, in context of your individual goals. If your goals are more about weight loss, long term general health and fitness, or muscle gain, then yeah, absolutely strength training first (other than maybe a brief mild cardio warm-up). If you have athletic goals in a cardiovascular (CV) sport, then I would generally suggest prioritizing the cardio because that's where the CV sport person's priority is. (I'm in that situation personally. When I do both a sport-specific CV workout and a strength workout on the same day, I do the sport-specific CV work first.)

Personally, I'd avoid doing cardio HIIT very often at all. HIIT is much hyped these days, and some amount of higher-intensity CV work is useful for people who already have a good CV fitness base (good endurance for long-duration lower-intensity work, basically). But high intensity exercise is disproportionately fatiguing. Fatigue can be counter-productive: It can make us drag through our day, contributing to those adaptive thermogenesis effects, and thereby reducing daily life calorie expenditure, in effect wiping out some of the exercise calories.

Elite athletes, who have the best professional advice money can buy, treat high-intensity exercise as a condiment or side dish, not the main meal. Most of what they do is longer, lower-intensity work. High intensity work might be once or twice a week.

Why would us regular duffers make high-intensity workouts a more frequent, regular part of our exercise routine? It can be counterproductive for net energy expenditure, and it's not the best route to well-rounded fitness.

On top of that, some things called cardio HIIT do use bodyweight or other resistance, so can compromise strength training recovery or cause overuse injuries in that way, as well. Please be careful.

IME, much of what breaks a plateau is patience, and continuing good habits. You don't say how long your weight has been stable. If it's less than 4-6 weeks, it could still be a pseudo-stall related mainly to water retention. That's extra true if you're of an age/stage to be having menstrual cycles. Sometimes hormonal water retention can be pretty weird.

Best wishes for finding a solution!

Valid points above. Injury risk aside, it's not just a matter of preference. To maximize gains from lifting, you need to be targeting a reasonable amount of weekly volume, taking the target muscles close to their failure. If you can't meet either or both of those two lifting goals because you're gassed after a long cardio session, then you aren't going to get much benefit from the lifting. OTOH, if you do the lifting first then cardio, you can just stop the cardio whenever you're wiped. Either order you choose, you've done as much cardio as you can in that session, but if you lift second then you potentially miss out on strength and muscle gains.