i'm 40 years old. i mountain bike on weekends. work out at a gym most weeknights...typically 4 days per week. i've gone from 369 lbs. to 230 lbs.

i've been going to a 'fat doctor' monthly that uses calipers as well as a scale connected to a computer that helps measure body fat. a few months in a row now, he reported that i had lost some muscle as well as fat. which was odd...i felt like i was getting stronger. i could certainly see more muscle on my arms and shoulders (the rest of me is a saggy mess right now...can't see much definition anywhere). but it coincides with me attempting to push harder and harder on the cardio machines attempting to do a hiit workout.

i've been attempting hiit, but i don't think i'm fit enough to achieve it properly and have fallen into a medium intensity. while, seemingly pretty good for endurance (my mountain biking has gotten much, much better) i believe it's the reason for my muscle loss. and as a matter of fact, i didn't lose much fat during those months either.

so now i'm torn. i had a lost a fair amount of weight doing liss sessions and lifting on the same nights. i had been doing a 30 minute session on the treadmill. then lifting weights (mostly on the nautilus machines). then another 20 minute session on the exercise bike. now i'm afraid to do any cardio on the same nights i lift. and i'm almost afraid to do anything but liss for fear of not being able to move my legs fast enough to do any meaningful hiit.

suggestions (other than shut up and go workout? :D)

Let me get this right, 30 minutes of some type of cardio, then lifting, then more cardio?

What's your calorie level? How many times a week are you doing this?

Just at first glance, I'd cut the pre-lifting cardio at a minimum. If one of those sessions is HIIT (especially if it's the one before the lifting...and that's really too long to really do HIIT anyway for most people), no wonder you can put full intensity in much of anything.

How long is the lifting, and what do you do?

And coming down from your original weight, I'm not surprised you've lost some muscle. Almost impossible to retain all lean mass with that big of a weight drop. However, it's not the end of the world, but you have the right idea in trying to limit the loss to the absolute minimum.

In the scheme of things, I'd say the value of things to fat loss goes in this order:

Diet->Diet->Resistance training->medium to higher intensity cardio (including HIIT)->LISS type cardio

If you are at too big of a caloric deficit, you might be causing your body to burn off muscle with all of that time in the gym.

I'd say lift one day and alternate with HIIT on the non-lifting days if you want to do HIIT. Or if you want to do it all in one day, start at 3-5 sessions of :30 hard intervals, reducing intensity for 1:30-2:00 between those "on" intervals. As you get better at that, start adding additional intervals or time to the intervals :05 at a time. Don't go much over 20 minutes for HIIT, especially if it's after you've lifted. Remember, the fat burned from HIIT is burned later, not while you are doing it, just as muscle grown is not grown in the gym but in the recovery time afterwards.

EDIT: I love this (http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=1526539&cr=) article for a discussion of strategies for fat loss.

thank you for the response.

i keep my fitday profile public

http://www.fitday.com/WebFit/PublicJournals.html?Owner=jgs007 (http://fitday.com/WebFit/PublicJournals.html?Owner=jgs007)


i don't put activities in there because they seem to overestimate how many calories are burned.

i try to stay around 1400 calories per day at the suggestion of my fat dr. we've done a metabolic test and vo2 on me and with activity, that's where he recommends i stay. my rmr is 1950. so suggested intake to lose weight was 1285-1647 calories. we split the difference. i try to stay around 40/30/30 protein/fats/carbs....

this all started due to a plateau that i hit. i thought i had cleared it by just doing what i had been doing when he hit me with the muscle loss findings. i stepped up the cardio only to find more muscle gone...and no fat at all...the next month. continue that for 3 more months and dang if it isn't annoying.

my 'routine' consists of more free weights now than i had been doing. i do legs one night (usually monday or tuesday night so they're back to normal by my weekend bike rides). then 'pushing' lifts another night (bench press 3 sets, overhead lifts 3 sets, etc.). then another night i do pulling exercises (3 sets seated rows, curls, lat pulldowns, etc.). the typical lifting routine takes me about an hour or so (more on busy nights).

i attempted some hiit again last night. as i understand it, hiit is maintaing 85% of your max heart rate for a minute or two and then bringing it down for a minute or two and repeat until a body part falls off (typically around 15 minutes minus a few minutes warm up and cool down). is this correct?

i was able to go for 20 minutes on the ellipticle (plus 2 minutes warm up and 2 minutes cool down) at 2 minute intense and 3 minute non-intense intervals. the first couple went ok, my legs started to burn pretty good by the next set like they do when i mountain bike. i was at a much slower pace when i finished due to fatigue, but because of the resistance i chose i was still hitting the high 150s for heart rate. so i *think* i did pretty well there.

thanks for the link to t-nation. i'm going to go read through it now. man that website has a ton of ads :lol: i had to block images so i could view it at work without raising eyebrows.

funny how i thought i was doing so well for so long to have it all come to a complete stop and make me feel like my efforts weren't really getting me where i wanted to be.

thanks again for the help and for reading my rambling posts.

i try to stay around 1400 calories per day at the suggestion of my fat dr. we've done a metabolic test and vo2 on me and with activity, that's where he recommends i stay. my rmr is 1950. so suggested intake to lose weight was 1285-1647 calories. we split the difference. i try to stay around 40/30/30 protein/fats/carbs....

IMO, that's why you are likely losing lean mass. That's not very many calories for your size. It will cause you to lose "weight" eating that much, but a lot of it will likely be costly (metabolically) lean mass vs relatively inactive metabolically fat mass. I eat over 2000 to cut and I'm only 180 for a reference point, and my workouts are probably not as long.

Does your Dr truly know the type of exercise activity you are getting in the gym or on the bike? Doesn't sound like he's really adjusted for that very well.

this all started due to a plateau that i hit. i thought i had cleared it by just doing what i had been doing when he hit me with the muscle loss findings. i stepped up the cardio only to find more muscle gone...and no fat at all...the next month. continue that for 3 more months and dang if it isn't annoying.

Well, obviously the answer isn't solely more cardio you've found out :)

i attempted some hiit again last night. as i understand it, hiit is maintaing 85% of your max heart rate for a minute or two and then bringing it down for a minute or two and repeat until a body part falls off (typically around 15 minutes minus a few minutes warm up and cool down). is this correct?

You are making it way too complicated. Don't worry about heart rate specifically. Worry about putting full effort in. IMO, starting out with HIIT the best bang for the buck is to start at :30 intervals, because you really learn to push into the effort. Recover, and repeat. 2 minutes isn't HIIT for anybody but the top athletes, because most of us just can't sustain that kind of effort that long, and it really becomes medium intensity (which isn't necessarily bad...).

thanks for the link to t-nation. i'm going to go read through it now. man that website has a ton of ads :lol: i had to block images so i could view it at work without raising eyebrows.

T-nation is owned by Biotest who sells supplements. However, it's evolved into one of the best internet sources of writing by top coaches (and Cosgrove is one). You do have to wade through some of the product pushing in the articles, but most of us recognize that when we see it :)

funny how i thought i was doing so well for so long to have it all come to a complete stop and make me feel like my efforts weren't really getting me where i wanted to be.


You've made good progress, obviously. Just need to tweak things.

A good book that talks about why going too low on calories isn't necessarily the best or only way to cut is John Berardi's Metabolism Advantage (http://www.amazon.com/Metabolism-Advantage-Program-Fat-Burning-Machine-At/dp/1594863237/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/105-3145190-5140418?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190129643&sr=8-2).

However, it sounds like it would be contrary to your Dr.'s advice. You just have to decide if the Dr. is effectively getting the results you want with his advice, or if you should try other ways of doing things.

thank you for all of the helpful advice! and i believe that is the first time anyone has ever said i overthink anything. :lol:

i've read through the t-nation article and there is some great info in there....basically saying the same thing you've mentioned here.

i did a lower body workout last night....squats (bruised my neck somehow....), leg presses, leg lifts, calf raises, etc. then did 15 minutes of 'speed intervals' 1 minute on and 1 minute off on the exercise bike. i also did a 2 minute warm up and cool down....so almost 20 minutes in total.

tonight i'll do an upper body 'pulling' exercises lift session....curls, rows, etc. tomorrow night i'll probably just do a quick hiit session at the gym....maybe on the elliptical....

saturday and sunday of this week, i'll ride my mountain bike, which should suffice for the 'had cardio' the t-nation article mentions.

i'll keep up this regimin for a while and see how things go. i've also decided to eat a bit more protein in the evenings. i typically have a post workout shake (after lifting) consisting of 1 scoop of whey powder, 1/4 cup of fat free cottage cheese and a small scoop of natural peanut butter. i read on this board that was a good shake to have post workout. perhaps an hour or two later, i'll have some chicken or turkey breast, etc. that should boost my calories up a bit.

what do you folks think of that?

I agree you aren't eating even close to enough.

On the HIIT. Push hard for the 30s. Slow down until you can push again. Over time try increasing the push interval and/or decreasing the rest interval. BTW you don't have to even start with 30s. Some won't be able to push max out for that long and will need shorter times to start with. Also remember to warm up before the first push interval.

thank you for all of the helpful advice! and i believe that is the first time anyone has ever said i overthink anything. :lol:

Don't worry, it's common. People always seem to want to watch a HRM monitor while doing HIIT. IMO, that's distracting you from putting the effort in, when the real goal is to work as hard as you can, not reach a target.

i'll keep up this regimin for a while and see how things go. i've also decided to eat a bit more protein in the evenings. i typically have a post workout shake (after lifting) consisting of 1 scoop of whey powder, 1/4 cup of fat free cottage cheese and a small scoop of natural peanut butter. i read on this board that was a good shake to have post workout. perhaps an hour or two later, i'll have some chicken or turkey breast, etc. that should boost my calories up a bit.

what do you folks think of that?

For PWO on a typical diet, you probably don't want the fat from the PB in there if it's within an hour of so of the workout, unless you are doing it right before bed when you might want to slow down digestion. PWO is generally when you include carbs (so maybe blend in some oats).

HOWEVER...I don't do that, but I cycle my carbs and have low carb and high carb days. But with typical diets, the time for carbs is post-workout, and your fat consumption should be less for an hour or two so that you can absorb the proteins and top off muscle glycogen.

good info on the peanut butter in the shakes....i'll cut that out.

i'm 40 years old. i mountain bike on weekends. work out at a gym most weeknights...typically 4 days per week. i've gone from 369 lbs. to 230 lbs.

i've been going to a 'fat doctor' monthly that uses calipers as well as a scale connected to a computer that helps measure body fat. a few months in a row now, he reported that i had lost some muscle as well as fat. which was odd...i felt like i was getting stronger.

A: Calipers are not perfect.

B: Given your history I expect you are fit enough to do HIIT. You can ease the path to HIIT by increasing the metabolic intensity of your workouts - shorten the rest.

C: You might feel stronger because you are stronger, and also weigh less, and you can still have lost muscle. Muscle mass and strength are not the same.

D: It's not likely the endurance work that is burning off muscle unless you eat too few Calories to support it.