Over the past year, I have been dieting on and off, successfully dropping from 292 lbs to 245 lbs. However, I recently hit a road bump and haven’t been as strict over the last four months. During this time, I stopped doing regular cardio and shifted to working out only twice a week (one push day and one pull day). Fortunately, I’ve maintained my weight around 246–248 lbs, but I am noticing some regrowth in my abdominal area and need to refocus.
My plan is to return to a 3-day “Push/Pull/Legs” split, incorporating cardio post-workout and on my off days. My current stats and macros are:
Age: 35
Height: 6’2"
Protein: 240g
Carbs: 100–140g
Fat: 50g
I have two main questions:
Based on your experience, how long do you think it will take to reverse the progress lost during these last four months?
Regarding cardio, what frequency and duration would you recommend to be effective without overdoing it? Specifically, should I aim for 3 or 5 sessions per week, and should each session be 30 or 45 minutes?
Absent mention of intensity, there isn’t helpful data here.
You’re taking in sub 2000 calories as a 240lb trainee. Stacking a bunch of high intensity cardio on top of that is a recipe for burnout and regression. Cardio is cool, if your goal is to get in better cardiovascular shape. If you’re using it for fat loss, it’s a pretty terrible tool, and it should be saved for as long as possible and used as a minimum effective dose, because the body adapts to it quickly.
Activity is very very low other than 2 day gym session mostly sitting down due to a personal issue going on but thats not the point. If steps are this low u guys recommended daily cardio or 3-4x a week?
It takes as long as it takes. There’s not really an answer to these questions, and worrying about it will do more harm than good. You had an outcomes-based, not time-bound, goal.
Similar to @T3hPwnisher, I’d prefer a daily minimum step count if I were you. Somewhere between 8000 - 12000. Start at 8k and work your way up over many weeks only as needed. You will find you need to add purposeful activity (I like walking my dog) to get there. If you want that to be a 30-minute session on a treadmill, that’s fine. You don’t want to look at it from the other way around right now where you force yourself to drag through daily cardio sessions and starve yourself to the point you don’t move the rest of the day and end up at 2500 total steps.
Just been unmotivated due to some current depression / personal issue tradgey im dealing with…. Fell off ….. best thing im guessing is to start to walk 4 miles a day which will take 1.5 hour i have no choice…. And if i do that i dont have to gym cardio or u suggest also gym cardio?
I am recommending a total of 8k-12k steps a day. I don’t care what proportion of that is done in what setting. Everything you do toward that amount counts.
@TrainForPain you display excellent fatherhood skills here.
@livinlife is cardio something you just plain WANT to do? You’ve had 2 folks here telling you to hold off on it but you keep wanting to include it. If you like cardio: do cardio. We’re just saying not to employ it as a fat loss tool right out the gate.