I'm a 6' 290 lb male, I currently lift 3x a week (modified starting strength, lots of compound lifts) and do 45 minutes of low/medium intensity cardio on an elliptical (jogging pace, working, not reading magazines) 3x a week. My goal is to cut fat.

I eat 2600 calories daily, in a 40/40/20 protein/carbs/fat ratio. I have a large frame and a moderate amount of muscle, but obviously at 290 I still have a lot of fat to lose.

Doing this routine for the past 6 months, I have lost about 45 lbs, however recently my weight loss has tapered off a bit, down to about .65 lbs a week.

I have easy access to an elliptical machine, and I'd like to increase the cardio a little. However, I've heard that too much cardio can be counterproductive, as it also makes you lose muscle, especially if you do it for too long. Obviously losing too much muscle lowers your metabolism and hurts long term fat loss.

So, three questions:
a) Would my long term fat loss benefit from doing cardio 6x a week instead of 3x a week? (doing it after lifting too)
b) Would my long term fat loss benefit from increasing my cardio to say an hour instead of just 45 minutes?
c) Would I need to eat more if I increased my cardio like this?

Thanks in advance for any advice, this is a great forum.

I eat 2600 calories daily, in a 40/40/20 protein/carbs/fat ratio. I have a large frame and a moderate amount of muscle, but obviously at 290 I still have a lot of fat to lose.

Doing this routine for the past 6 months, I have lost about 45 lbs, however recently my weight loss has tapered off a bit, down to about .65 lbs a week.

I have easy access to an elliptical machine, and I'd like to increase the cardio a little. However, I've heard that too much cardio can be counterproductive, as it also makes you lose muscle

A: Are your lifts going up? As you lose weight, many exercises get easier and you don't burn as many Calories as you did when you started out doing them. So as you lose a lot of fat, you need to add iron to things like squats to prevent them from getting too easy.

B: You can add cardio. When you have a lot of fat, it's very unlikely that your body will lose muscle due to increased exercise. Losing muscle is a lot more an issue for lean people and people on too big a caloric deficit.

I am honestly no expert, so this is only my opinion on what might be happening. but at your weight, and with a large amount of exercise you are getting, you may not be taking in enough calories now that your body has adapted to the deficiet. conversely, you may need to try dropping a few hunder calories per day to continue with the weight lose... so yeah, clearly I don't know.. but I bet its one of the two.. haha sorry, I shouldn't have started to type.

I'm a 6' 290 lb male, I currently lift 3x a week (modified starting strength, lots of compound lifts) and do 45 minutes of low/medium intensity cardio on an elliptical (jogging pace, working, not reading magazines) 3x a week. My goal is to cut fat.

I eat 2600 calories daily, in a 40/40/20 protein/carbs/fat ratio. I have a large frame and a moderate amount of muscle, but obviously at 290 I still have a lot of fat to lose.

Doing this routine for the past 6 months, I have lost about 45 lbs, however recently my weight loss has tapered off a bit, down to about .65 lbs a week.

I have easy access to an elliptical machine, and I'd like to increase the cardio a little. However, I've heard that too much cardio can be counterproductive, as it also makes you lose muscle, especially if you do it for too long. Obviously losing too much muscle lowers your metabolism and hurts long term fat loss.

So, three questions:
a) Would my long term fat loss benefit from doing cardio 6x a week instead of 3x a week? (doing it after lifting too)
b) Would my long term fat loss benefit from increasing my cardio to say an hour instead of just 45 minutes?
c) Would I need to eat more if I increased my cardio like this?

Thanks in advance for any advice, this is a great forum.

Well lets see, you are now 290 lbs, in 6 months you lose 45 lbs or about 1.9 lbs a week. So you started at 335, right. Anyway if you lose about 2 lbs a week that is good. Don't worry. you don't want to eat more. give us an idea about your weight program. How much are using for weights in say squats, deadlift, row or shoulder press? How many reps or sets? How much rest between sets? Do you change incline on treadmill? how long has weight loss been off? Any chance your eating has changed? :confused:

Doing this routine for the past 6 months, I have lost about 45 lbs, however recently my weight loss has tapered off a bit, down to about .65 lbs a week.



How long have you been at the slower pace? Some times your body just takes a break. Depending on your diet it may be something simple like water weight. How intense is your cardio? If your cardio is really intense you don't want to over work yourself. OTOH my 85 year old mother can walk for hours every single day [LISS I guess]. Not all cardio is the same.

I am honestly no expert, so this is only my opinion on what might be happening. but at your weight, and with a large amount of exercise you are getting, you may not be taking in enough calories

If his body fat is where he says - which may or may not be accurate - then he's getting enough calories.

How long have you been at the slower pace? Some times your body just takes a break. Depending on your diet it may be something simple like water weight. How intense is your cardio? If your cardio is really intense you don't want to over work yourself. OTOH my 85 year old mother can walk for hours every single day [LISS I guess]. Not all cardio is the same.

as beneficial as high intensity cardio is, I wouldn't do anything real intense at such a high weight, could really hurt his knees

as beneficial as high intensity cardio is, I wouldn't do anything real intense at such a high weight, could really hurt his knees

That's what step ups are for! Or, for more experienced lifters, deadlifts and squats.

The whole idea of using weights for cardio is that you can use much fewer reps than traditional cardio to get the same elevation in heart rate. There is also much less impact (unless you do Olympic lifts). And, by using step ups, the bodyweight is fully part of the load in the exercise which can reduce the need to add weight.

With step ups in particular, you can adjust the exercise with step height to any level of fitness or skill. With high available resistance, low impact, low repetitions, and pretty good safety, step ups can be a great exercise for getting high intensity without side effects.

Intensity is also related to fitness. What today barely makes me breath heavy might have killed me a few years back. Or what would have pushed me hard years ago is very mild today.

Intensity is also related to fitness. What today barely makes me breath heavy might have killed me a few years back. Or what would have pushed me hard years ago is very mild today.

Precisely. And when you consistently work out with good relative intensity, whatever that is for you at the time, you should expect to increase your exercise tolerance. That's almost the whole game of health improvement through exercise - almost all the good things you want for health come when you increase your exercise tolerance.

I've done the "too much cardio" thing. I've had great results from advice gleaned from this forum over the last two years. I can now burn up a Lifefitness elliptical at level 20 for 45 minutes and I can't get my heartrate up over 135. Waste of my valuable time. I've started using weightlifting for cardio per Zen, what an asskicker! Clean, front squat, press, back squat, press, try to at least slow the bar down on the way to the floor, do over. Five of those with a 90 sec rest with 95 lbs x 4 will kick a mudhole in your butt. I did do it after 4x20x295 squats, so fresh I'll try more reps or less rest. I'm gonna sell my elliptical. Why even bother going to the gym or getting on a machine if you're not wiped out when you're done? I did replenish with a small dose of simple carbs (Guinness supplied maltodextrin;) when finished. That helps. I'm cutting but hey, life is short. I'll work harder to get the cookie.

1. You need more calories (the last time I was at 190lbs cutting to 180lbs, I was eating more than you). Use the Harris-Benedict formula to calculate your daily calorie intake and then multiply that times your activity level. Don't forget the last part (for example: according to the Harris-Benedict formula you need a base calorie intake of 2500+ calories - assuming you're over 35 - and that doesn't include your activity. Assuming you are just sedentary, we'd still need to multiply that times 1.2 which equals 3000. To lose fat you would drop below that slightly; again, assuming you are sedentary - which your activities you mentioned don't seem to fit with that).

2. You didn't mention re-feeds; do them at least once a week. When you get below 10% bodyfat, increase to at least two a week. If you don't re-feed, you can't throw off your body and it will get stubborn and go into starvation mode. Also refeeds boost your metabolism, are wonderful for your thyroid, and enhance your bodies preformance (work out on the weakest body part on re-feed days).

3. If possible, mix up the type of cardio you do. Do some HIIT and some LISS to constantly make your body guess. Remember HIIT is not about heart rate, but effort. In other words, you need to find your max effort in order to do HIIT - many do not do this and thus miss the power of this exercise.

4. Rather than do cardio, sometimes mix up your training. Do some other anaerobic exercise like jump rope/pushup circuits (jump roping for 1 minute, immediately doing pushups for 30 seconds, jump roping for 1 minute, immediately doing pushups for 30 seconds, rest for a minutes and repeat). There are many circuits you can do that workout multiple parts of your body, but are built on the same principle as HIIT.

Clean, front squat, press, back squat, press, try to at least slow the bar down on the way to the floor, do over. Five of those with a 90 sec rest with 95 lbs x 4 will kick a mudhole in your butt.

Is that The Bear?