Cardio or Gym?

diusmr8a504cvk

Hey lads, I'm a slim guy but I'm carrying a bit too much belly fat. Would the best option be to burn off the fat through Cardio and then hit the gym or what should I do? I've heard that doing core exercises can develop muscle under your fat thus making your appear bigger which is why I'm leaning towards running off the fat and then bulking up. All replies appreciated.

Cake Man

I think you're putting too much emphasis on exercise and haven't mentioned anything about diet, what's a typical days eating for you?

Exercise is important but diet is at least 80% of it so there isn't really such thing as "running off the fat".
Sprints and high intensity interval training (HIIT) can help but ultimately it's going to be down to a calorie deficit. Unfortunately for us fellas, body aft is the first place on and last place off around the belly so it's a stubborn fecker to get rid of.
I would recommended weights or other resistance training a few times a week but ultimately you should do whatever exercise you enjoy and what you think you'd stick at.

MightyMandarin

Do both, it's always better to do cardio after weights when trying to lose weight. And the above poster is spot on about diet; it doesn't matter what exercise plan you have, if your diet is crap you won't lose fat. Find out how much calories per day you need to maintain your weight, and then subtract 300-500 from that. You should look to lose about a pound a week.

neil_

Cake Man wrote: »

ultimately you should do whatever exercise you enjoy and what you think you'd stick at.

That's pretty much the answer there. This may sound a bit clichéd but you should be trying to make a long term lifestyle change so that you will get in shape and stay in shape. Anything that gets your heart rate up will do the trick.

atilladehun

I was fairly similar to that up until about 6 months ago.

Fix up the diet, cut out sugars as best you can. Going to no sugar in my tea was really hard but once I did it I found more drive to reduce biscuits and bars too.

I also hit a streak in the last 6 weeks of not drinking that much (just with other things on) and it has made a huge difference. Even though we are generally skinny those foods do make a difference.

I found cardio useless. I did bodyweight exercise at home adapted from a variety of sources. Toning up and burning calories through bodyweight muscle exercise has helped me mostly. When you start doing more than 20 of something three times, eg squats, push ups, pull ups, core moves then make them harder. I started with convict conditioning but I've adapted part since.

Your comre muscles probably need a lot of work, don't worry about building them up under fat you'd have to be doing mad stuff to do that I think. Get them strong, they'll tone up your shape and allow you to be batter at other exercises.