Quite a few people who can’t lose weight (or fat) with cardio, can once they try weights (this is true of me, on a small scale.) The added advantage is that you save time. (>8 mile runs may be pleasant on occasion, but they sure do take a while.)
This is very interesting to me. I’ve been lifting every morning for the past month or so, and have been quietly annoyed with myself for almost always lacking the willpower to just spend 20 minutes on an elliptical. Should I still expect losses once I’ve built some muscle mass?
Actually, now I think of it, I’m pretty down. I’m gonna make a second gym stop on the way home—thanks for priming the option ^_^
Ellipticals are horrendous. I can’t spend 20 minutes on an elliptical. Something about it is just willpower-sapping and no fun at all. Try doing something outside.
As I understand, complexes (switching from one lift to another with no rest) are a perfectly sound fat-loss workout no matter how advanced you are. If you hate all cardio, complexes are just as good.
I’ve spend over 20 hours per week on ellipticals for over a month before. One of the major aspects of my approach to exercise is “quantify everything mercilessly,” and having readouts for how fast I’m going, heartrate, calorie burn, etc. made it more attractive than just running outdoors.
(I’ll note that I don’t consider this to have been particularly sane behavior; it was accompanied by some extremely harsh diet restrictions, and it probably had a lot to do with a resurfacing of old eating disorder habits.)
I wouldn’t play music or anything while using them, I would just zone out, and let the whole experience blur together. It made the sessions feel much shorter in retrospect than they actually were.
I generally use treadmills instead when they’re available, but running outdoors is pretty near the bottom of my list for enjoyable forms of exercise.
This is very interesting to me. I’ve been lifting every morning for the past month or so, and have been quietly annoyed with myself for almost always lacking the willpower to just spend 20 minutes on an elliptical. Should I still expect losses once I’ve built some muscle mass?
Actually, now I think of it, I’m pretty down. I’m gonna make a second gym stop on the way home—thanks for priming the option ^_^
Ellipticals are horrendous. I can’t spend 20 minutes on an elliptical. Something about it is just willpower-sapping and no fun at all. Try doing something outside.
As I understand, complexes (switching from one lift to another with no rest) are a perfectly sound fat-loss workout no matter how advanced you are. If you hate all cardio, complexes are just as good.
I’ve spend over 20 hours per week on ellipticals for over a month before. One of the major aspects of my approach to exercise is “quantify everything mercilessly,” and having readouts for how fast I’m going, heartrate, calorie burn, etc. made it more attractive than just running outdoors.
(I’ll note that I don’t consider this to have been particularly sane behavior; it was accompanied by some extremely harsh diet restrictions, and it probably had a lot to do with a resurfacing of old eating disorder habits.)
I wouldn’t play music or anything while using them, I would just zone out, and let the whole experience blur together. It made the sessions feel much shorter in retrospect than they actually were.
I generally use treadmills instead when they’re available, but running outdoors is pretty near the bottom of my list for enjoyable forms of exercise.