Trying to lose weight but not strength?

Dizzy the Egg

I'm trying to drop a stone, mainly by cycling road and jogging. If I done solely these would I also lose strength and muscle?

Or would doing circuits, press ups, medicine ball and weights be counter productive if I'm trying to lose weight?

Cheers

Pippen33

No, they will do fine. A bit of weight training thrown in would certainly benefit though. Just for general info really and not SPECIFIC to the topic...

There are 2 types of skeletal muscle fibres. Type 1 & 2. Type 1 are slow twitch, which contract for long periods with little effort, beneficial to xc riding etc..., and type 2, which contract rapidly, beneficial to sprinting and weight lifting etc... it's type 2 which are major contributors to the burning of fat and bone longevity.

Which is why throwing in some weight training wouldn't do any harm, especially in the long term, to benefit your fat loss, your jogging (help prevent shin splints), and your life.

endurojcb

Are you trying to loose weight or fat?

If it's the latter then all you need to do is burn more calories in a day than you consume. 1kg (2.2lbs) of fat is the equivalent of 9000 calories. If you normally consume 2000 calories in a day without gaining or loosing weight then you need to lower your intake by 900 calories a day for 10 days to loose 1kg of fat. Of course if you lower your calorie intake and increase your calorie usage by doing more exercise then you'll loose the weight quicker.

Don't starve yourself though because once you start eating again you'll put the weight back on as fat in no time. Just eat as healthily as possible. Plenty of fresh fruit and veg, rice, wholemeal bread, chicken, fish and reduce your fat intake. Cut out crisps, chocolate, fast food, microwave dinners, those extra beers on a night out with the lads (250-300 calories a pint, so have a vodka and diet coke instead which is only about 50 calories). You'll be suprised how much healthy food you can consume and still loose weight with regular exercise.

Pippen33

Actually, for 1kg of fat there is 4000 calories. There are 4 calories, per gram of, carbs, fat and protein.

Surf-Matt

Keep exercising (do circuit stuff like press ups, etc - high reps, lowish weight) and eat less cr4p. You are very unlikely to lose any strength.

Simple.

SBezza

Actually 1kg of fat would mean burning off 7,700 calories, fat contains about 2 times the amount of calories compared with the same weight of carbs, ie it is alot more calorie dense. You need to expend 3,500 for every 1lb of bodyfat.

As Matt says, if you want to retain upper body strength, then do upper body exercises, like press ups, etc, that way you should lose it the fat, and weight without losing strength. Building up muscle will mean putting on weight however, though you should lose more fat than the muscle you put on.

Dizzy the Egg

Cheers guys!

Started doing lots of running as well so hopefully things will start to improve soon

j4mmers

remember muscle weighs more than fat, so you could well burn fat and actually maintain your weight if youre doing muscle building work. So might be worth double checking your goals! get yourself a monitor for a pharmacy to keep a track of your % body fat as weighing wont necessarily give you all the answers.

Johnclimber

Don't tell anybody but these worked for me http://www.hollandandbarrett.com/pages/product_detail.asp?pid=153

Some info here http://www.risingstarlc.com/carnitine.htm or just search Google for L-Carnitine

Phippsy

John

I've got some, and am taking as it's worth a shot to lose a couple more pounds.

Can you provide more details as to how you used them and to what results, proof they work etc? :?

jamesag

Muscle also consumes much more energy per kilo than fat at rest, so by building up muscle you raise your BMR, and so increase fat burning without training.

Surf-Matt

Apparently fidgeting burns quite a few calories!!