Too Much Cardio Followup
Isn’t to some extent, exactly what The Biggest Loser folks do? Restrictive diet in the 1k-1.5K calorie range, and then extremely high volume, low-medium intensity cardio for hours and hours? Essentially burn 2K or so cals in 4-5 hours of various stupid cardio activities and be 2K or so under Sedentary maintenance calories with their diet? Trying to make a 3.5k+ deficit every day?
Why Big Caloric Deficits and Lots of Activity Can Hurt Fat Loss
That said, I’ve mentioned in previous articles that one oddity that I’ve seen (and personally experienced) over the years is one where the combination of very large caloric deficits and very large amounts of activity (especially higher-intensity activity) can cause problems for people either stalling or slowing fat loss.
Training the Obese Beginner: Part 6
Ok, seriously, time to finish this thing up. In Training the Obese Beginner: Part 5, I made a case for the inclusion of both weight training and cardiovascular training for the obese beginner, despite having listed some limitations to both in earlier parts of the series. I also described what I did generally as far as a first workout session with my beginners, including the obese.
Training the Obese Beginner: Part 5
Well, I had really hoped to finish up today since I have something else to talk about next week but, well….Tuesday or this thing will be unreadably long, even for me. Today, I want to start to bring together everything I’ve talked about, addressing why I think the inclusion of both weight training and cardiovascular training of some sort is important for the obese beginner and why both should be done from day 1.
Training the Obese Beginner: Part 4
Anyhow, in Training the Obese Beginner: Part 3 I basically summarized everything to date to conclude that the best approach to target all of the various issues going on was a combination of progressive volume higher rep weight training (to deplete muscle glycogen) along with dietary modifications (both carbohydrate and/or calorie reductions) with progressive amounts of cardio as fitness improves to both burn of fatty acids directly and start to retool mitochondria to overcome that defeect. All wonderful (and a nice run-on sentence), but how to practically go about it?
Training the Obese Beginner: Part 3
I want you to know that typing that heading made me die a little bit but that’s how it goes; it’s just such a trite, cliched and worn out phrase. As I mentioned, a common finding is that the obese individual often has a lot of fatty acids floating around in the bloodstream (secondary to insulin resistance at the fat cell) but tend to rely more heavily on glucose and carbohydrate (indicated by a resting RER) both at rest and during exercise for various reasons.
Training the Obese Beginner: Part 2
As usual, my goal of finishing in two parts was unrealistic, this will have to finish up on Thursday in Part 3 when I”ll put it all together and talk about practical implications/applicational stuff. For now I want to look at a few more physiological issues including increased muscle mass in the obese, a brief look at metabolic rate (mainly a mythbuster thing) and then finally at some of the realities of exercise.
Training the Obese Beginner: Part 1
As usual, I’m going to be a bit longwinded so I’m going to divide this up into two parts. Today I want to focus mainly on some of the underlying physiology that occurs in the obese (and make no mistake, what I want to cover won’t be anywhere close to comprehensive; I’ll focus on issues relevant to fat loss); next Tuesday I want to look at some practical issues that I find many forget when they give advice and/or train the obese hands-on.
How We Get Fat
Ok, this is going to be a bit ranty but, trust me, I write better when I’m upset. If the Internet has proven anything to me over the years it’s this: basic literacy is sorely lacking. Because the comments in response to the article I wrote on Tuesday, Excess Protein and Fat Storage – Q&A indicate that not only can people not understand rather basic concepts, they insist on reading things into what I am saying that I have never said. I could rant about making uncritical inferences but I’ll spare everyone that.
The LTDFLE
Now, I have a bit more clue what’s going on, or at least what I think is going on so I’m going to share one of these with you (I’ll address others in future articles). Today I want to talk about something that I like to call the LTDFLE, an acronym that I genuinely hope you will use at every possible chance on forums to confuse people, and which will make sense shortly.
