Am I doing too much?

K

karitaru

0
Ok, this is my situation.
I was 225 lb (too fat) about 8-9 months ago. I did some cardio, mostly on the stationary bike for half an hour and walking/running for another half hour.
I never thought I was doing much cardio, and I still belive that I am not doing much cardio, yet I lost more than 40 lbs and somewhat feel good about my body, even though I still have about 40 more to go, since I am about 5 ft 5 in.

Ok another thing I have to mention is that I saw in the biggest loser Australia that it is good to jump on the treadmill and run as fast as I can for half a minute, stop for another half a minute, then run again for half a minute. They said I should do it for 10 minutes. When I started I did it for a whole hour (so basically half an hour of running max speed = 5.00 mile/hour and another half an hour at full stop), threedays a week. Then I started doing the same excercise for half an hour and six days a week combined with bike and elliptic.

First of all, am I doing to much? Am I burning muscle.

I should mention that I started strength training about 4 months ago. Nothing fancy, on excercise per muscle group (dumbbells or machines) for 15 reps, and do the whole body twice weekly.

The other day a guy stopped me and said that I did too much damage to my liver by running and stopping the way I explained earlier. He said you can't sleep, but I sleep more than 8 hours. He said you feel chest pains, and I haven't felt any since I started my exercises. Is this guy into something? He said he was a doctor, and showed my how to lift weights, but with extremely light weights, that it is really boring. And he told me to walk instead of running the way I run. This way I am sure I wouldn't lose another pound.

Please tell me what to do. Should I see a doctor. I feel perfectly well. I haven't trained for 5 days feering that I might be damaging my health for some unknown reason.
 
I would have to say that yes, you are doing the run/stop on the treadmill for too long. I have to ask you.... If they said to do it for 10 minutes, why on earth are you doing it for 60 minutes? When you say "Then I started doing the same excercise for half an hour and six days a week combined with bike and elliptic," how exactly is this layed out? Do you do the intervals on different machines, or do you do 30 mins intervals, then more time on the bike and elliptical? As for the really light weights, I'm not sure that you're going to get any benefit from that. Even 15 reps is a bit high, but might be OK for general conditioning if weight training is very new - it can also be helpful for practicing proper form.

The general idea for high intensity intervals is to do it for 10- 15 mins max. Plus at least a 5 min warmup and a 5 min cool down. It's not that great for your blood pressure and your body in general to go from all out to a full stop... can you walk during those 30 sec 'rest' intervals?
 
PLBFitness said:
I would have to say that yes, you are doing the run/stop on the treadmill for too long. I have to ask you.... If they said to do it for 10 minutes, why on earth are you doing it for 60 minutes? When you say "Then I started doing the same excercise for half an hour and six days a week combined with bike and elliptic," how exactly is this layed out? Do you do the intervals on different machines, or do you do 30 mins intervals, then more time on the bike and elliptical? As for the really light weights, I'm not sure that you're going to get any benefit from that. Even 15 reps is a bit high, but might be OK for general conditioning if weight training is very new - it can also be helpful for practicing proper form.

The general idea for high intensity intervals is to do it for 10- 15 mins max. Plus at least a 5 min warmup and a 5 min cool down. It's not that great for your blood pressure and your body in general to go from all out to a full stop... can you walk during those 30 sec 'rest' intervals?
Click to expand...

Thank you PLBFitness for your reply.
When I say, "Then I started doing the same excercise for half an hour and six days a week combined with bike and elliptic," I mean that I go for the bike for half an hour on a cross city programmed track (recently a hill track) and at times it could get real hard. Then I go for the interval training on the treadmill for whole half an hour at speed 5.3 miles/hour and gradient 2, and then 5 mins of cool down at 3 - 1.5 miles/hour.
The attractive thing about this is I keep on losing an average of 1.5 lbs a week. And lost a total of more than 40 lbs in about 7-9 months.
My strength training was not with really light weights. I was doing weights that I can do for 12-15 reps and can barely do the last rep, and I train the whole body (except for the thighs) twice weekly, with one exercise for each muscle group (except for shoulders). Recently I changed my tactic to heavier weights and 8 reps and again I can barely lift the last rep, and train a part of the body a day, so
Mon: Chest
Tue: Shoulders
Wed: Back
Thur: Biceps and Triceps
Fri: Quads, Hamstrings and calves.

The reason I wasn't training the thighs earlier was because I thougt that cardio was enough, and I was able to see muscle growth in my Quads, and feel the muscles in my Hamstrings.

I tried once to run at 5.3 for intervals of 30 secs then walk at 3-3.5 the next 30 secs but it was too hard, I was out of breath.

Yesterday I combined running with walking in the park for varible length intervals basically since I didn't have a watch on, but I really don't know how fast I was running. I would run untill I am very tired, then walk untill I feel I can run again. I found out that the track is about 1.7 miles.


Q: How many minutes of cardio is suitable for me to lose my next 30-40 lbs?
 
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