Body magic

mojomcl

Silver Member
Hey folks, following a sticky patch of STSs, I've well and truley upped my body magic.

I've been doing a minimum of 5 hours a week intense cardio, along with a couple of hours weights & toning, an hour or so swimming, along with my usual walking -around 10 hours of moderately fast walking, and about 5 hours of cycling. I've been doing this for almost a month, and have only had one good loss, the first week (4lbs) - followed by two on, STS and half off! My legs are def benefiting from my weights etc. but the scales are refusing to budge.

I work full time and can't really fit much more exercise in. Sooo. Any tips, folks? :confused:
 
Perhaps you are building muscle. Muscle is more dense than fat, so you may weigh more, but look leaner and lose inches. Either way, this is very good for your body; building muscle makes you more healthy, a lot stronger and it boosts your metabolism. I think that for every extra pound of muscle, you burn 50 extra calories (though I'm not sure, I must look that up!)

Make sure you are drinking plenty of fluids and perhaps keep a food diary for one week and see how you go with that if you don't already. I hear that this helps other people and it definitely helped me this week.

Hope this helps and good luck!
 
mmm, nice thought :) I've no idea how it take to build muscle, so don't know if I can use that one just yet ;-) But I am feeling fit, and strong, and toned (although not my bingo wings, and that was the main point for starting! hahaha)

It did dawn on me last week that I hadn't been eating much, between this heat, and being so busy. This week I've taken my C's advice to eat plenty carbs (I do green days), and I make a point of eating lean protein soon after a workout, to save my muscles from too much hardship! lol
 
Measure yourself! are you losing inches? I know it's annoying but the muscles retain water at first (not sure why) are your clothes feeling any looser?

Good luck with the exercise and I'm sure the weight will come off soon with all the effort your putting in. x
 
Measuring myself if one of those things I've NEVER got around to doing :( And I think 'I'll start now', and then think 'nah, there's no point now!' hahaha
 
hmmm, that's the odd thing. No, I wouldn't say they are - but I'm SURE I look a touch slimmer, whereas usually I can't see ANY difference, even if the scales say I've lost. My waist seems a teency bit more defined, so I can just about believe that I have a figure. It might be a big figure, but it's there somewhere! lol
 
"intense" cardio may not be the right way for you to lose weight, to burn fat you need to maintain a heart rate of around 65% of your maximum for at least 30 mins, if you work too hard youll train your heart and lungs but will not burn as much fat.
to work out your max heart rate take your age from 220, so in my case im 40 so my max heart rate is 180, 65% of 180 is about 177bpm, in terms of going to the gym and working out thats not a high heart rate to hit, if you do anyting like spin classes or body combat, aerobics stuff like that your HR wll be higher, in my case around 150-160bpm, this is too high to burn fat, once your heart rate gets above around 70% your body cant convert fat to energy fast enough for it to be any use, thats not to say that higher energy ouputs wont help you lose weight they will, but its more likely that your body wont be able to maintain that level of output for long enough for it to do you any good unless your fitness level is quite high.

you might find you have better losses if you lower your output at the gym to 60-70% , everyones different, if your working hard all the time you will deffinately developing more muscle mass, it might not be hugely noticable but it will be happening............
 
hmmm, I'll need to re read that properly, and work it out later (at work just now). The 'intense' cardio I'm doing is aerobics and zumba, although my walking and cycling is cardio too, I guess. The classes last an hour each, and my walking and cycling rarely last less than 45 mins at a time, but, walking especially, can be anything up to about 3 hours at a time.

Is that factually correct about the high heart rate not buring fat? I would have though the higher the heart rate=more calories used? Well I've just worked out my max rate based on what you've said, and I would say I exceed that even on a brisk dog walk, so I might be in for a coronary at my classes ....:-S
 
Mojo, When I first upped my exercise, pretty much going from nothing to about 6 hours hard work per week I had very little loss for about a month, it was driving me crazy! Whether it was muscle I was building (not sure I built enough for that to be the reason though I was weight training a little) or something else I don't know but the gym trainer did say it may slow losses but give overall results.

Happy to report that my losses have picked up again even though I'm exercising almost as much per week. I don't know why but I think it's quite a normal thing to happen so don't worry, keep it up because it will only be doing you good. Hopefully your losses will pick up and you can have the best of both worlds. Oh and make sure you're eating enough, it's easy not to when busy training but your body needs more energy to repair muscles or something and muscles burn fat so you need them.:D
 
the max heart rate is a rule of thumb, some people cant get anywhere near it some people can go well over without harm,
i didnt say you wont burn fat at a higher heart rate, but your body has to use glycogen for energy at high outputs it cant burn fat fast enough, thats why you hear things with like marathon runners "hitting the wall" the wall is the point where your body runs out of glycogen (stored in muscles) and switches to ketosis (producing energy from stored fat)
its just harder for your body to retreive energy from fat.

so its the steady output of 65% over a longer time that makes your body burn fat for energy and leaves the glycogen in your muscles in case it needs sudden high output, like sprinting past the kebab shop in my case, they say a minimum of 30 mins as that can be the ammount of time it takes your body to switch to burning fat for its energy.
 
Thanks all.
EF, I STS for the WHOLE of last year, and following shaking things up with a couple of EE days my losses did start again (yay!) - I think I'm just getting paranoid now that I start to STS again.
 
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