“A higher frequency can be used but I wouldn’t see much point to more than five per week unless the intensity is kept very low (e.g. you can do brisk walking daily if desired). Going longer than the bare minimum of 20-30 minutes will burn a few more calories but there are limits to time availability (and people start to get bored) and I might set a reasonable limit of 40 minutes of moderate intensity cardio at the maximum; if the intensity is kept way down (again, think brisk walking), an hour is acceptable.”

And how much while dieting depends and will range from none (some can get lean with nothing but lifting and diet) to lots (some may be doing 1-2 hours/day at the end of a contest diet).

What would be the max you would recommend of steady state cardio on a fat loss program as far as minutes/duration and frequency/days per week.

I can’t wait for your article on creating the deficit via activity and food restriction. I think it’s time to write this!
Thanks.

Thanks for contributing this one. This system worked 99.9% for me, it should also work for most of you especially if you follow the procedures well and keep it moderate. I remember a year ago when I incorporated 30 min threadmill running before my weight training, those are the moments that I really gained mass very very fast. Like most of us we always experiment, then I changed my exercise programs more than 3x then. The latter programs didn’t give me lots of mass gain anymore. I couldn’t really figure out what went wrong, UNTIL I READ THIS ARTICLE. Again just two weeks ago I incorporated 30 min carido on my mass gain program, 10min before and 20 min after exercise. And it really works! I gained 1+ kg fast in just two weeks. I hope many of us could benefit from this. More power to the author. By the way I’m just a dwarf at 5′3″, 71+ kg with 19% body fat.

I’ve been reading a lot here on your site and I had a theory that i wanted to pass by you. Please tell me if im nuts.

I’ve read that when losing weight you can have a 31 calorie deficit per pound of fat you have on your body. I also understand that in order to gain muscle mass you have to have a calorie surplus.

If you are someone who has a decent amount of fat, but you’re PSMF’ing , so you’re intaking a good deal of protein, if your body wanted to make muscle, could it draw from the calories in your fat and work with the high amounts of protein you’re eating?

I recognize I could be nuts but I wanted to know does that have any logic to it at all?

Hal: I think you’re spot on with everything you wrote.

Lyle

Low intensity does NOT result in fatty acids providing “most of the fuel”. It just allows for a higher percentage of fuel coming from fats than glycogen, but that percentage doesn’t come anywhere near 50%.

Since the benefits of cardio while gaining mass seem to be greatest in terms of maintaining some conditioning (since you’d still need to be in a surplus to gain mass), is it safe to use strength levels and bi or tri-weekly weigh-ins/body comp checks/etc. as a guide to whether or not the cardio is too much or just right? I would presume that if recovery from training is good and the scale and other measures used to track progress are going in the right direction that the current cardio load is probably about right. Would cardio to help stay lean apply more so to someone who is a bit more liberal with dietary intake than someone who has a tighter handle on things and shoots for something like a 500 kcal or +10-20%kcal over maintenance?

And on one final note, when you said “keep the fat burning pathways active so that the shift to dieting is a little bit easier,” does this relate to preventing too much down regulation of the activity of certain enzymes? I realize the ins and outs of this are beyond the scope of this article Q and A, so I am mostly curious if I am on the right track with this or way off the beaten path. SO I am essentially just asking for you to confirm that or tell me that I am not even in the ballpark

As always, thank you for your help and for sharing your wealth of knowledge.