TOPIC: Steady state cardio for large fat loss while minimally hitting muscle

Hi guys, I'm about 60-70 pounds overweight and looking to slim down. I've got a good deal of muscle as well, do ~5x5 sets of ~360 on deadlifts, ~275 on bench, ~190 on shoulder press, etc. Suck at squatting but deadlifts still hit my lower body at a higher weight. Anyway,

I'm doing a bunch of trainings for career development and all of those can be done on a tablet a treadmill/stairmaster. Any and all TV I'd watch could be done there as well. One of my job sites has a treadmill desk so I could potentially be walking on it a few hours a day. I have free weekend mornings and was thinking of jogging outside without a shirt for a couple hours on an empty stomach (w/BCAAs) to get a tan going as well. If I do a ton of cardio at a low intensity while still lifting heavy 4/5 days a week while taking red growth/BCAA/creatine, can I significantly slim down with minor (or no) muscle loss?

Any advice would be appreciated

It's not possible even on drugs while losing fat to not lose muscle as well. You can retain as much as possible but it's not possible to retain all your muscle.

Eat lots of protein (1.2-1.5 grams of protein per lbs of bodyweight), keep lifting and try your best to retain as much strength as possible.

This will be the best way to lean down.

There's an illusion as well when slimming down. Even though your total weight of muscle in your body is going down, so is your fat and you start to look like you gained muscle during the cut.

Yeah, I'm eating primarily protein and trying to keep all eating to a 6/at most 8 hour window depending on the day, with all carbs coming after workouts or during (if it's like a banana). What's the best way to keep as much muscle as possible? I read some of Chris's articles where he heavily recommended BCAAs for cardio. I'm guessing I should keep lifting as heavy as possible as well.

The way I see it, I can chip away at an extra 1500+ calories a day while going about it very slowly

Keep lifting heavy. Stop stressing about keeping all your muscle - you are 40kg overweight, and that's the elephant in the room. You're probably obese - that needs to change, both for health reasons, for the "halo effect", for sexual/romantic relationships, for your friends treating you with more respect, for you not feeling so gross as you look in the mirror, for you to have more energy as you go about your day, for you to sleep better, etc.

You're obsessing about the wrong thing, basically (keeping muscle). Obsess about losing fat.

Lose 40kg of fat, then worry about where your muscle is at.

killtheinnerloser wrote: Keep lifting heavy. Stop stressing about keeping all your muscle - you are 40kg overweight, and that's the elephant in the room. You're probably obese - that needs to change, both for health reasons, for the "halo effect", for sexual/romantic relationships, for your friends treating you with more respect, for you not feeling so gross as you look in the mirror, for you to have more energy as you go about your day, for you to sleep better, etc.

You're obsessing about the wrong thing, basically (keeping muscle). Obsess about losing fat.

Lose 40kg of fat, then worry about where your muscle is at.

Thanks for the advice. Yeah I'm looking to be obsessive about it, hence tacking on a large amount of cardio every day. I'm 6'5 & 322, have muscular arms/upper body and a large stomach. Definitely obese but look more like a former college athlete turned high school lifting coach who packed on the pounds than just full on fat (though I was like that years ago and it was really bad). I bang 6s and 7s from online dating but want to get back to approaching hot girls without it being completely out of place and looking good in fitted clothing.

You'll get there if you make it your number 1 obsessive goal. 40kg (70lbs) is easily doable in 9 months - I lost 35kg in 9 months.

You'll be lean by Christmas if you go hard.

Let me give you my number 1 cardio tip. Some people do "hard" cardio. Running, sprints, HIIT, burpees, etc. And some people do "easy" cardio. Long walks, stairs, light jogging, etc.

Both have their advantages.

Hard cardio burns fat faster and gets your heart-rate up, but it's less pleasant and you can't do it as long.

Easy cardio isn't as unpleasant, but you don't burn as many calories.

What I use is what I call the Walk, Run, Walk Method. (I'm sure I didn't invent this, that's just what I call it.) Essentially I go walk around my neighborhood for about an hour, but every few minutes I intersperse some hard cardio. So I might walk for 5 minutes, and then sprint for 30 seconds, then bring it back down to a walk for another 3 minutes, just jog for 3 minutes, then walk for 5 minutes, then do a set of 20 burpees, then continue walking, etc.

You get the best of both worlds. The intermittent "hard" cardio keeps your heart-rate elevated beyond what it would be with normal walking, but you don't do it for so long that you get burnt out, so you can continue doing it for a full hour and end up burning more calories that you would with either a short but hard cardio session, or a long but easy cardio session.

Ethan wrote: Let me give you my number 1 cardio tip. Some people do "hard" cardio. Running, sprints, HITT, burpees, etc. Some people do "easy" cardio. Long walks, stairs, light jogging, etc.

Both have their advantages.

Hard cardio burns fat faster and gets your heart-rate up, but it's less pleasant and you can't do it as long.

Easy cardio isn't as unpleasant and you don't burn as many calories.

What I use is what I call the Walk, Run, Walk Method. (I'm sure I didn't invent this, that's just what I call it.) Essentially I go walk around my neighborhood for about an hour, but every few minutes I intersperse some hard cardio. So I might walk for 5 minutes, and then sprint for 30 seconds, then bring it back down to a walk for another 3 minutes, just jog for 3 minutes, then walk for 5 minutes, then do a set of 20 burpees, then continue walking, etc.

You get the best of both worlds. The intermittent "hard" cardio keeps your heart-rate elevated beyond what it would be with normal walking, but you don't do it for so long that you get burnt out, so you can continue doing it for a full hour and end up burning more calories that you would with either a short but hard cardio session, or a long but easy cardio session.

Thanks for the advice. I know about HIIT 24 hour fat burning benefits and am looking to do that a few days a week. Will intersperse sprints with jogs on my weekend get tanned runs as well.

I read about Ronnie Coleman and other pro bodybuilders doing an hour of treadmill walking before going to bed as a way to shave off fat while keeping their muscle on, as well as Chris's article on empty stomach light cardio and kind of put the idea together.

Gonna start a training/eating log to hold myself accountable and go from there

I think its smart for you to be thinking about this so here’s a few things that have really helped me preserve my strength and muscle when cutting.

- lift heavy and stay in a low to moderate rep range. I like 4-6 for some exercises and 6-10 for others. You’ll definitely lose endurance on a cut, but I’ve found it’s a lot easier to maintain strength in a lower rep range than a higher one. Track and write down all your numbers on notecards so always you’ll know what you need to get on the next set to avoid losing strength.

-in a similar vein, keep volume managed. I workout 4x per week when bulking and 3x per week when cutting. I try to keep my workouts shorter than 90 minutes or so.

-don’t do too much cardio. Your diet and weight training is much more important, and doing tons of cardio before it’s really necessary is just going to leave you depleted. I usually like to jump rope for like 15 minutes on my rest days, but often I skip it and it’s no problem. I like cardio that’s kinda moderate or easy, I guess you’d call it steady state.

- stick to a meal plan. Because day to day consistency is super important. Seriously, this has been extremely important for me. Invest in yourself by taking the time to learn about nutrition and don’t fall for the fads and tribalism. In a nutshell, writing a meal plan goes like this:

Identify how many calories you need.

Identify how many of each macro you should be getting.

Look at foods/ recipes that you like.

How many meals per day? Less is more convenient and it’s the way I usually go when cutting.

Make balanced meals that you’re okay with eating everyday. You can throw in some variations but the more consistent you are the faster you’ll lose the weight. Keep in mind things like pre and post workout nutrition should affect the composition of your meals.

Overboard95 wrote: I think its smart for you to be thinking about this so here’s a few things that have really helped me preserve my strength and muscle when cutting.

- lift heavy and stay in a low to moderate rep range. I like 4-6 for some exercises and 6-10 for others. You’ll definitely lose endurance on a cut, but I’ve found it’s a lot easier to maintain strength in a lower rep range than a higher one. Track and write down all your numbers on notecards so always you’ll know what you need to get on the next set to avoid losing strength.

-in a similar vein, keep volume managed. I workout 4x per week when bulking and 3x per week when cutting. I try to keep my workouts shorter than 90 minutes or so.

-don’t do too much cardio. Your diet and weight training is much more important, and doing tons of cardio before it’s really necessary is just going to leave you depleted. I usually like to jump rope for like 15 minutes on my rest days, but often I skip it and it’s no problem. I like cardio that’s kinda moderate or easy, I guess you’d call it steady state.

- stick to a meal plan. Because day to day consistency is super important. Seriously, this has been extremely important for me. Invest in yourself by taking the time to learn about nutrition and don’t fall for the fads and tribalism. In a nutshell, writing a meal plan goes like this:

Identify how many calories you need.

Identify how many of each macro you should be getting.

Look at foods/ recipes that you like.

How many meals per day? Less is more convenient and it’s the way I usually go when cutting.

Make balanced meals that you’re okay with eating everyday. You can throw in some variations but the more consistent you are the faster you’ll lose the weight. Keep in mind things like pre and post workout nutrition should affect the composition of your meals.

I started a training and diet log to keep myself more accountable. I'm definitely looking to keep lifting heavy in the 4-7 rep range for primary muscle groups (325+ for deadlifts, 245+ for bench, 180+ for shoulders, 200+ for rows). Doing higher reps for biceps and triceps since I'm looking to have a constant ~45 minute pump for those until total exhaustion. Gonna add farmers walks, tire flips and box jumps to lower body work as a way to mix cardio with heavy lifting. Once I drop 20 pounds or so will start doing stairmaster with a weight vest which should decrease muscle loss as well.

I do a lot of traveling for work/side hustles and my schedule can be crazy any given day, so I don't have an exact meal plan other than sticking to 2 meals a day with a snack to eat during a workout. I generally skip breakfast (sometimes do bulletproof coffee at 8AM which keeps me going until the afternoon), have my first meal between 130/230, go work out ~2 hours later once I've digested it and have time. Usually I eat protein heavy things and mind carbs/sugar. A lot of the times I make a huge 12 egg omelette with steak, bacon, cheese, mushrooms, onions and garlic and eat it over the course of 3 days. Other times I go for fish, either smoked salmon or sushi without the rice. If I eat carbs it's from eating mediterranean Cava like food with hummus, eggplants, quinoa, brown rice and all kinds of meats and veggies. I drink fresh pressed vegetable juices or eat fruits like pineapples during workouts with the goal of getting vitamins/antioxidants while using the sugars to power lifts. I'm also trying to keep all the food intake to a 6-8 hour window to reap IF benefits and eat cottage cheese with peanut butter right before bed for a source of natural slow-release protein.

For supplements, I'm taking BCAAs for empty stomach light cardio, 2 capsules of Red Growth and Red PCT per day, vitamin B complex and ZMA before bed. Looking to add creatine as well.