Also, what exercises would you recommend at a regular cardio gym and how many hours per day? A follow up to.
I f*cking HATE normie fitness gyms. HATE them! But unlike martial arts gyms, I can go there without obligations and won't get shamed for missing a day or two like I did at kickboxing or boxing gyms I used to go to. I can even skip a whole week at a normal gym without anyone caring.
Plus, my main goal is to lose weight. I want to lose 100-120 pounds in one year. Thinking of doing High-intensity Interval Training, especially if I can save time and achieve the same results. I'd rather not spend more time at the gym than I need to, and doing an "intense but short" workout appeals to me a lot more.
I'd rather fight and do kickboxing, but that hasn't proven to budge a single pound, as far as weight loss in concerned. I even went Monday through Friday for eight hours a week (only one hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays cause I leave work late on those days) and never lost A SINGLE POUND! That's demoralizing. https://thefitnessphantom.com/4-week-workout-plan-for-weight-loss-with-pdf
Two hours a week or less.
Four hours a week.
Six hours a week.
Eight hours a week.
Ten hours a week.
More than ten hours a week.
I don't exercise / I don't know.
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The common consensus seems to be four hours a week. I honestly expected most people to say "more than ten."
How many hours of gym cardio exercise per week do you think a person needs in order to lose weight and maintain being healthy?
In terms of cardio, if you're already doing kick boxing in the gym or anything relatively active, then it all counts, so you don't even need to do it in the gym, especially if you walk a lot anyway.
The only way to lose weight is with a calorie deficit, so basically consume less calories, although if you have a medical condition that doesn't allow it, maybe go to a medical professional to see what they say.
I think one of the best ways to lose fat, is to weight train, because when you build the muscle underneath, the fat will be less visible and you're distracting your body:
When you weight train, your body breaks down muscle fibres and they need protein so they come back bigger and stronger, as well as rest and recovery.
Carbs and fats are also necessary, so don't avoid them, otherwise your body will use protein as energy, instead of using it to repair and rebuild muscle fibres, so basically eat enough to justify weight training in the first place and then eat what you want on top of that and try limiting the bad stuff as much as possible, starting off easy and gradually cutting it down.
As for weight training, you don't actually need to train so hard or push yourself, at least not at first, because as long as you're training smart and feeling the appropriate muscles contracting, then it's enough to stimulate it and it's probably best to do as a beginner.
It takes time to see some shape too and you can lose body fat and gain muscle together, so you don't need to worry about the scale so much, as it doesn't tell you the whole story. Also, muscle tissue is smaller than fat tissue, so when you lose fat and gain muscle, you'll lose mass and be slimmer. That being said, if you develop muscle underneath, it will shape your body out and if you have a bit of fat on there, then you may look a bit bigger at first.
It might depend on the person and what they eat and what they can manage but the biggest weight loss transformation I made was 15.9kg (~35lbs) in six weeks.
I did it through around 1-4 hours every other day of cardio so I went with 10 hours/week. My go-to was stair climbing and I highly recommend it for people too lacking in motivation for HIIT and too bored to do low-intensity steady-state like walking or jogging for ages.
I have this huge staircase within walking distance from my home at the train station. It's just like a 3-minute walk to the staircase. I found it easy to motivate myself to do it as a result since I just focus on putting one foot in front of the other, getting out the door, repeating until I'm at the staircase, and climbing up and down.
It's four flights to the top. So I'd go up and down. Up and down, up and down, no rest. Then I'd just do that for about 20 mins. Then I'd rest and do it again. Then at night time after work, I'd do it again.
After I started getting used to it, I made it harder so I'd climb up the stairs, sprint to the adjacent staircase, dash down, sprint, dash up, sprint, dash down. I'd catch my breath on the way down.
It's still my #1 goto when I'm out of shape to quickly get back in shape but I only need to do it these days for around 20-30 minutes every other day, not 1-4 hours.
I also varied how long I would do it depending on how I felt. I aimed for minimums though. So when I started, I aimed to go up and down at least 15 times which translated to 60 flights of stairs. Then as I got used to that, 20, and 25, and 30, and so forth. Then by the time I was reaching 40, it was taking too long so that's when I threw in the sprints between adjacent stairs and dialed it back down to 20. Then take a long rest (sometimes whole day) and do once more.
It's also not just like pure cardio. It really builds up explosive muscles in the quads, hams, glutes, calves. So you start becoming able to do pistol squats effortlessly and jump higher and higher as you do it.
My philosophy is somewhat antithetical calories in and out. That's such a scientific way and people make such a crude argument that you can jog miles and still reset the calories you burnt with some cookies. That's true but that is looking at calorie output like a one-day thing, so short-term, and not looking at how training makes you stronger, faster, more energetic, more confident, etc. Caloric output is a moving target -- not a constant -- If we do it right, and one that can gradually increase.
We make modest improvements to nutrition while we boost our caloric output and that's a fat-burning recipe. So I always just wanted to be in shape. My weight doesn't matter as long as I can resist my body and be light on my feet. That's the mindset I recommend for those who struggle with the (in my opinion) often dumb advice of the health and fitness industry which would reduce us to machines putting calories and burning calories out.
We aren't machines; we're human beings with habits and flaws. Prescribing a successful strategy isn't the hard part, it's getting people to follow it. And everyone has their own habits and hurdles to overcome. Weight loss is really a psychological thing. And if I was ever a PT, I'd factor psychology in 90% more than anything else.
Scientists would turn us into hamsters on wheels. "Just run the wheel this long every day and eat only this! That's all you have to do!" STFU! You know what I'm saying? We're not machines. The real challenge of weight loss is finding something that motivates you that you can enjoy and you feel a real progress doing it whether it's skill or energy or speed or confidence or anything else. It's way more complicated than people citing scientific papers would make it and yet much simpler at the same time.
"The real challenge of weight loss is finding something that motivates you that you can enjoy and you feel a real progress doing it"
I agree with you. The Calories In, Calories Out crap also assumes all people are the same and burn calories the same way, and have the same metabolism and insulin levels. They don't. I think people who only say Calories In, Calories Out are foolish. I put up there with the people who just tell poor people to just "work hard" to become rich. Like there isn't millions of poor people who work hard daily.
As for me, I've ALWAYS f*cking hated exercise! Especially cardio! I've been doing martial arts on and off since 2012 and not one of them have I actually enjoyed. Judo, the first time I did jiu jitsu, boxing, Korean boxing, UFC-style MMA, kickboxing, and the latest attempt at jiu jitsu...
Literally only ONE form of exercise I ever actually enjoyed and it was the opposite of my weight loss goals, and that was powerlifting. I did it in 2016 for like five months before the guy's gym got permanently shut down by the city for some building code violation BS. But when I was lifting heavy weights and doing the squat and pull and all that sh*t, I could FEEL myself getting stronger! We had big men and women in the gym, but also these five foot tall women who were one-third my size, lifting 200-250 pounds; the size of a fully grown man.
THAT is the only time I ever actually FELT like doing something athletic. And I only got to do it for five months some six years ago, now. Normal fitness gyms don't have the weights, nor the instructors, to do actual powerlifting. And there's only like four gyms solely dedicated to this in all of South Korea; all of which are in Seoul, which is like 90 minutes from where I now am, and even when I lived there, they were really far away.
But honestly, I only ever did martial arts so I could hold my own in a fight and defend myself and others. It's something I've never enjoyed, even though everyone else who does it gushes over it, especially jiu jitsu. I always hated going.
One conjecture I have and it might be my bias as a sprinter and also favoring calisthenics is that I think it becomes easier to burn energy throughout the day if we can build up a lot of leg power so that we feel relatively lighter and springier on our feet: strong enough to comfortably squat, lunge, leap.
It's like if you put a 50kg vest on my upper body and I had to wear it throughout the day, of course just about every single motion my body makes is going to expend a lot more energy. But the problem is that I might barely want to do anything and spend much more of it sitting or lying down than on my feet and my TDEE might very well plummet instead of increase.
So it might help to try to gain some of that endurance and power in the legs so that you start feeling more tempted to spend the greater portion of the day whether it's teaching your classroom or just running errands on your feet.
You might also be wired more towards fast-twitch muscles if powerlifting suits your mentality. Powerlifting training is explosive and expends a lot of energy quickly but requires lost rest intervals to come at each set fresh. That's somewhat analogous to sprinting as opposed to distance running.
So you might be better suited and also find it more enjoyable to train at very high intensity but for short periods of time followed by long rests. That usually isn't optimal for burning the maximum energy during a workout but it does tend to help you get strong and skillful very quickly if you train that way, and that strength and skill might help you burn more energy when you aren't consciously exercising.
The best way to lose weight is to be in a calorie deficit, and if you’re still overeating by a lot then cardio alone won’t make you lose weight.
I also don’t think there’s a set amount of time you should spend doing it - it depends on each individual. Rest days are important, but I would recommend aiming to do 8000-10,000+ steps per day if possible, going on walks are actually so good for you. And then, you could maybe do cardio at the gym 3 days a week for however long you feel like, and maybe add in some weight training while you’re there too as having muscle helps with fat loss!
I’m trying to lose weight and I go to the gym 3x per week for weight training mainly, I lose it mostly through a calorie deficit, but I also try to go on plenty of walks through the week and do a bit of cardio at the gym while I’m there (usually on the treadmill)
3 at an absolute minimum. But 5 is even better. have seen people get good results in just 2-3 months of 5 hours/week.
Some study recently found that even if you only exercise for a couple of SECONDS it has as much benefit as 30+ minutes if you do slow resistance training. Won't build bulk but still building strength. But the kind of people who don't feel like doing 1 hour will also not want to do a few seconds.
I agree with you about gyms. I prefer outdoor exercise. Have a home gym too but it's more of a backup.
As I said in the description, I used to do eight hours a week of kickboxing, Monday through Friday. It wasn't light, girly crap either. My ENTIRE shirt would be sweaty from what we did. We did cardio in addition to the kickboxing (which was only about 30 minutes of a 50 minute session) and sometimes we even did bullsh*t like burpees! I weigh almost 300 and I was doing burpees! I did yoga, I did the rolly-wheel thing with the two handles to stretch, I did battle ropes, I did the rubber band stretches, I did lunges, and all other kinds of stuff. And having done some form of martial arts for years, I was more flexible than most of the people there, who were less than half my weight (it is Korea, after all; they're skinny people).
I did this shi*t for two and a half months (September 2021 to mid November 2021) and I never lost a single pound. You have any idea how crappy that can make someone feel? The gym owner and trainer, a former Korean kickboxing champion, tried to say I was "gaining muscle" and changing body shape, but it sounded like little white lies to me. THIS is why I hate all exercise, to begin with. Cause my body is sh*t. If it actually did something, I'd feel more inclined to wanting to keep suffering through it all to make it to the endgoal.
Using a weigh scale is a mistake because if you're building muscle. The scale can't tell you how much of your weight is muscle/fat. Only a fat pinch meter can do that, or I suppose if you got into a water displacement tank that could tell you something too. Same issue with a lot of women where they complain about weight numbers... so you can have a woman who is 120 and looks like crap, complaining that she needs to lose a lot of weight & another woman who is 160 who looks amazing but has a lot of muscle.
As far as 'white lies' .. maybe your trainer was just guessing but you're guessing too if all you use is a weigh scale. I guess if I'm in your shoes, I would just go overboard until I see the results I want. Might take longer for you than for some others. Maybe the type of exercise you were doing isn't really ideal for you too. Just a guess.
I’m no expert… I know a combination of diet and exercise on a consistent bases works unless one has health issues… like taking meds for critic issues. Funny I’m getting my nails done at the moment. the technicians just started to talk about weights and excerises. She said she runs daily an hour or 1/2 hour… key is consistent. good luck
RE Update,"I get the feeling that ten hours would be too much too fast. Start with the 4 hours using hard/easy workouts. Increase milage no more than 10% per week.
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