Is it safe to do more than 60 mins of fat burning cardio? What about high intensity cardio? I might try this to stimulate some more fat loss

also, i know you should not eat before or after fat loss cardio, is it the same for high intensity cardio?

Is it safe to do more than 60 mins of fat burning cardio? What about high intensity cardio? I might try this to stimulate some more fat loss

also, i know you should not eat before or after fat loss cardio, is it the same for high intensity cardio?

When prepping for contest, towards the end of her training, my wife's trainer had her doing 2.5 hours of cardio per day. 60 in the morning, 90 at night, steady cardio. Boring and long, I know, but she leaned out very well in the final month. I'd say that extra-long bouts of cardio are unnecessary unless you're on a plateau or pushing to lose fat at already low BF%, say below 12% for men (below about 16~17% for women).

I know little of HIIT, it's not something I practice...

Is it safe to do more than 60 mins of fat burning cardio? What about high intensity cardio? I might try this to stimulate some more fat loss

also, i know you should not eat before or after fat loss cardio, is it the same for high intensity cardio?

What do you mean by "safe"? In other words, people run marathons that last hours, and they survive. So apparently it is safe as in, you can do it. Is it safe to preserve muscle? That depends less on the time and more upon how you work up to it - going from nothing to 60+ minutes is different that slowly working to 60 minutes and having the right nutrition and recovery.

High intensity? If you can do it for more than 30 minutes, it is not high intensity - unless you are a Norwegian cross-country skiier (these people can keep their heart rate to 80% of the zone for 2 hours or more) ... seriously, in general, if you can go past 30, then increase how hard you are doing it and do it less. With high intensity, more is not better, more intense is better (within reason - don't go out and injure yourself).

As for "should not eat before or after" that is one opinion of many. And I say opinion because I know for a fact you can cut to single digits body fat eating both before AND after cardio. It depends on how much muscle mass you want to preserve/gain during the process.

Jeremy

>As for "should not eat before or after" that is one opinion of many. And I say opinion because I know for a fact you can cut to single digits body fat eating both before AND after cardio. It depends on how much muscle mass you want to preserve/gain during the process.

Which one preserves the most muscle?

For the last 10 days i've been doing 5 hours of bicycling, about 50 miles daily. HR is average 100/110 with spikes to 130/150.

I eat 2000/2400 cals 33/33/33 ratio. Every 5/6 days 1 fullbody workout with 4500 calories.

Haven't noticed any kind of mucle loss so far, and fatloss is -finally- satisfactory.

Like jeremy said if you can do 60 minutes "intense" cardio, it's probably not intense :)

Keeping your HR at 100/110+ for 5 hours daily seems to be great for me at the moment.

I'd say experiment and see how it goes, but try not to waste your muscles, eat well, dont overdo it.

>As for "should not eat before or after" that is one opinion of many. And I say opinion because I know for a fact you can cut to single digits body fat eating both before AND after cardio. It depends on how much muscle mass you want to preserve/gain during the process.

Which one preserves the most muscle?

Considering that up to 20% of your energy requirements come from protein, and when you wake up in the morning you are in a fasted state and have gone on average about 8 hours without supplying your body with additional nutrients (i.e. protein) then you suddenly jump into a cardio session ... I know, I know, "Your body is FORCED to burn fat because there's no carbs" ... BUZZER .. wrong answer .. sounds logical and works for the average person but if you look at biochemistry and how the energy cycles in your body really function, you will use quite a bit of protein (it will be deaminated to convert it to sugars in order to fuel the fat-burning process).

I'm not saying you are going to have starved muscles falling to the floor with fasting cardio, some people find it effective, however my experience is that it is more critical to look at calories throughout the day and having something low glycemic that is high in fiber and healthy fats with moderate protein only helps preserve/gain muscle while cutting, rather than hindering the fat loss during the cardio.

Jeremy

I often do more than 60 mins of cardio per DAY, but never in a session. I may take a martial arts class for an hour in the afternoon or night for an hour and if I lift that day, do 20-30 mins of intense cardio after that.

I never do fasted AM cardio, all my cardio sessions are high intensity and I am still burning fat and apparently gaining/maintaining muscle.

How about doing 60mins of cardio at one go with intensity that you can still talk to your friends?

What kind of food should I eat and how long before the run so that I can have the minimum loss of muscles?

what i meant by safe is minimizing muscle loss and maximizing fat loss

i had GREAT results at the beginning of my cut by doing early morning cardio 5 or 6 days a week. it seemed like the pounds were just rolling off.

now it seems IMPOSSIBLE for me to make any difference. i see my weight changing slowly but i see no aethestic change in the mirror. ill post pics to compare with early august, but im pretty sure my weight will be the same as it was, since i fell off the wagon for a while.

early morning cardio is good for me since it allows me enough time in between cardio and weights. i tried weights and cardio side by side over the summer and i did not like it.

most of the time i've been trying to do 40 mins elliptical and 20-40 mins incline walking. the incline walking is definitely 65-75% of my mhr, so thats always fat loss zone. what i was refering to before, was sometimes ill try and get my hr up to 80-90%, which is high intensity for me - but i only try this for the initial 40 mins on the elliptical.

i guess what im asking is for early morning cardio, should i stick to 40 mins 65-75% hr on the elliptical, or would it be beneficial to try for the 80-90% before i do my 20-30mins incline walking. sorry for the needlessly complicated grammar.

thanks for your replies

just to back up jeremys response I am a biochem major and what he says is totally correct, in fact we are studying such cycles (Kreb cycles- Citric Acid cycles Glycolysis, transisition cycles etc etc) where when no carbohydrate or pyruvate (Broken down carbs) are in the body the body tends to use protein (muscle) and adipose tissue (fat). I guess it all has to do with whether you mind losing your muscle or not, but remember MUSCLE BURNS FAT, so the more muscle you have, the more anabolic/catabolic you will be (I forget lol)

While Jeremey is right about deamination of amino acids to fed your body fuel for the krebs cycle, there is also the break down of fats as mentioned. It comes down to a balancing act really because getting to really low BF for a lot of people can require some serious cardio and cutting, but this tends to negatively affect your muscle mass. So it can come down to how much muscle are you willing to risk in order to lose that fat? Cardio is a great way to burn fat but it can be a double sided blade.

There is a reason professional body builders have an offseason weight that is substantially higher than their competition weight... because staying that ripped and maintaining that much muscle over a long period of time wont work well.