I have started running on an elliptical in hopes of losing some pounds. Yesterday I went for 45 minutes at a brisk pace and it said I burned 754 calories. Is this the best way to spend my time? I've read where walking is better. Help me fitness experts

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I would add some weight training to that as well, specifically a circuit routine. The mens health abs diet workout is good, all the P90x weight routines are good as well.

Building muscle speeds your metabolism and your body burns more fat. You may not technically lose as much weight, but you will look like you lost more.

Elliptical might be the least impact cardio that exist:

http://www.nutristrategy.com/caloriesburned.htm

I am doing some lifting and ab work as well. Is it better to do muscle confusion like p90? Like instead of doing 5 sets of bench then 5 sets of flys. Doing one set then one set then one set of lats and back to bench?

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If you're serious about losing weight, you'll need to eat a lot better. The exercise is great, but you're going to exhaust yourself too quickly without seeing any results, which will make you give up before your goal is reached.

sleeper;467897 wrote:If you're serious about losing weight, you'll need to eat a lot better. The exercise is great, but you're going to exhaust yourself too quickly without seeing any results, which will make you give up before your goal is reached.

I've went to slimfsst shake for breakfast. Almonds for a snack. Subway 6" for lunch. More almonds for snack. Dinner. All using a calorie counter on my Droid that has me on a 1600 calorie plan.

Need more vegetables, more fruit. Almonds are great. Subway 6 inch could mean a lot of things. Slimfast is kind of gimmicky, but better than nothing.

All in all, 1600 calories is definitely below what you need, so in theory you should be losing weight.

Dinner always has at least a side salad if not a dinner salad. Will add more fruits though. I do slim fast because I'm not a breakfast person and that at least gets me started

Alton Brown has a good breakfast smoothie recipie he used to when he lost weight. Watch both parts of the episode.

[video=youtube;U2gaQ0IoIfU][/video]

I still think a piece of fruit would be better than a shake. I'd recommend an apple since it has a lot of fiber in it. Slimfast is just really expensive for what it is, and has a lot of chemicals that I wouldn't trust. A glass of milk would easy be better and have the same effect.

The elliptical is a good low-impact cardio routine, especially if you have beat up knees or something like that. But depending on how long you've been working out, do the other forms of cardio machines as your body will adapt to the elliptical and your progress will hit a peak. I would say give it 3 weeks if you hit the ellipitcal 5 days a week. After that, mix in the ellipitcal up with the stairmaster, treadmill, swimming, running outside, ultimate frisbee, spin machine whatever. Personally, I find no use for the sit down cycling machines at most gyms unless you are severely out of shape/morbidly obese.

Also: start vomiting! keeps me skinny as a peapod!

I have adapted my eating very similar to this although I still use P90X & Insanity as my primary workouts...

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/definitive-guide-primal-blueprint/

sleeper;467911 wrote:Subway 6 inch could mean a lot of things.

Yes. Get the bread with the most fiber (wheat or oat) and load up on the veggies (green peppers, onions, spinach) and get white meat (chicken or turkey)

ClayAikenation;467919 wrote:Personally, I find no use for the sit down cycling machines at most gyms unless you are severely out of shape/morbidly obese.

Yeah they're pretty pointless, that's why I use the upright bikes, it's the exact same (to me) as riding a regular bike, especially if you do random hills with random resistance.

I ride about 10 miles a day, some days 15 depending on how bored I get, I've been eating better and I've already lost 7 lbs in the past 3.5 weeks.

I recommend biking if you're going to use a cardio machine, but swimming if a pool is available to you.

Cardio coupled with resistance training and proper diet is the best way to go. I'd recommend weight training at least 3 times a week (maybe do a push, pull, legs routine) and cardio 5 times a week. Diet: whole grains for carbs, lean protein (tuna, skinless/boneless chicken breast), fibrous vegetables, and water. No pop, beer, energy drinks, gatorade, just water.

Ideally

- Do your cardio first thing in the morning before you eat anything
- Later in the day (about 2 hours after a meal with plenty of carbs) do weight training. Of course only on one of your 3 lifting days
- Eat small meals every two hours or so to up your metabolism
- Get 8 hours of sleep a night

Realistically

- If you can only exercise once a day, I'd suggest doing cardio in the morning on your non-weight training days and cardio after weights on your weight training days. I would not do more than 30 minutes cardio after doing weight training due to increased cortisol levels. Lift for 30-45 minutes, run for 30
- Eat responsibly
- Shoot for 7 hours of sleep a night

*Couple of other things - do abs each of your 3 lifting days. I'd suggest breaking it up by day: upper abs, lower abs, sides (obliques/serratus). If you do go with a push, pull, legs routine keep the same exercises for about 4 weeks then change it up. There's a ton of different things you can do, just google push pull legs for ideas.

I definitely agree: do your cardio first thing in the morning. It took some getting used to, but I run 3 times a week before work, for about 30 minutes, and I shed 13 pounds and my abs got nice and defined. In the past, I had run on treadmills after work, and didn't get nearly as good results. I eat "healthy" during the week, but indulge in plenty of wine, booze and great food on the weekends, and the routine is very doable.

Is subway tuna healthy?

There's a lot of mayonnaise in a subway tuna, I'd go with turkey with lots of vegetables if you really are striving to be extremely healthy.

bases_loaded;467975 wrote:Is subway tuna healthy?

Not at all. It is one of the worst things you can get because it is full of mayo. Don't get me wrong I used to get it a lot but stopped once I realized how bad it was.

According the subway website a 6" tuna sandwich has 530 calories and 30 grams of fat and that's without adding veggies, cheese, etc.

http://www.subway.com/applications/NutritionInfo/nutritionlist.aspx?id=sandwich

Sonofanump;467867 wrote:Elliptical might be the least impact cardio that exist:

http://www.nutristrategy.com/caloriesburned.htm

This is crap. You def lose more than 400-500 calories after a wrestling practice.

Aerobic exercise is great, but you do need to implement some light weight training as well.

Unless you want to get "big", you just want to use light weights and a lot of reps. This will get you toned/ripped over time along with the aerobic exercise.

My past experience, especially talking to fitness experts, is that start off with aerobic to get your heart rate up and then go right to the weight training. They say that weight training keeps "working" (burning calories, elevated heart rate, etc) for much longer after you are done working out than aerobic training does.

So, I have always started with aerobic to get "warmed up" for 20-30 minutes and then did 20-30 minutes (or more as you progress) of light weight training.

like_that;468021 wrote:This is crap. You def lose more than 400-500 calories after a wrestling practice.

Lol, 400-500 calories at a wrestling practice?

I think its funny that somehow judo/ju jitsu had more calories burnt than wrestling practice for 1 hour. Um, last I checked the acts of judo/JJ are similar to wrestling and the calorie burn should be pretty close.

Wrestling is the gayest sport of all time. Seriously, grabbing half naked men in tights? Yikes!

I'll pass.

sleeper;468056 wrote:Wrestling is the gayest sport of all time. Seriously, grabbing half naked men in tights? Yikes!

I'll pass.

Wrestling is also the most physically demanding sport "of all time".

Its funny how the same people who make such ignorant comments about wrestling, are also fans of MMA...