At the gym I go to they have a few little articles off the internet on the announcement board. They describe how lifting weights and building muscle is the best way to burn fat.
This is a common misnomer.
Building muscle is an intensive process, energetically speaking. Calories are energy. Put differently, in general you need an excess of calories over and above what your body needs to facilitate muscle growth.
Before we get a bunch of guys in here screaming, "Whatever Steve, I've build a ton of muscle while dieting..." let's stop and clarify a couple of points:
1. Most people confuse muscle development while dieting with muscle exposure. Take myself for example. When I'm over 200 lbs, I get a bit softer. When I'm at 185, I appear much bigger and more muscular due to the reduced fat levels. Of course I don't have as much muscle at 185. It's simply a pleasant deception.
2. Getting stronger does not = getting more muscular
3. Untrained and/or people carrying a good bit of fat can, indeed, build muscle and lose fat simultaneously. Shit, I've seen trained people do it too when training has been perfectly matched and genetics are on their side. In all cases though, the muscle development in the face of a deficit will not be very significant or long lived. It's just not the way our bodies work... we're geared for survival of a species and building a lot of muscle during a shortage of energy would not be conducive to survival.
4. Even if you were to build a significant amount of muscle, don't be fooled by what a lot of these 'gurus' are pitching how every pound of muscle burns an additional 50 calories per pound or whatever the going, ridiculous number is nowadays. I've seen it hover between 35 and 100. Point being, building a bunch of muscle in the face of a deficit, if it were possible using natural means, wouldn't make the kind of difference you're expecting.
The title of one article is how doing cardio is not the best way to loose weight.
There's no such thing as One Best Way.
So cardio isn't the best. Nor is weight training.
It takes a multifaceted approach which works synergistically.
So I read them and have incorporated a weight lifting schedule into my work out. I have been on it for 2 weeks now. 4 days of weights and 3 days of cardio. Each day of weights isolate a different muscle group.
It's hard to tell but I doubt your routine is optimal from what you say here. Isolating one body part per workout is usually not the best way to go. At all.
The stickies outline how to set up some example programs that would really do you some good.
I do not want to build bulk.
If bulking were easy, everyone would be walking around with enormous muscles.
Even if your a male (more hormonally and genetically inclined to build muscle) and you're eating a surplus of calories and training perfectly for muscle growth, it's not going to happen to the extent that you're 'bulked' up.
So if you're dieting and training sub-optimally, I sincerely wouldn't be concerned about this AT ALL.
I want to increase metabolism and increase the amount of calories my body burns resting.
See above.
Where I am getting confused is on the resting issue. On my cardio days (45 mins on the elliptical) I am not lifting at all. Is this considered "resting" my muscles?
Depends on how intense your cardio sessions are.
If you're lifting weights and doing high intensity cardio on your 'off training' days, you're giving your body very little chance for recovery and heading down a path to overtraining and overuse injuries.
I am also watching my diet and I read where a caloric deficit will not grow muscles. So is my weight lifting a waste of time?
Sorry, I'm replying as I read along. I covered this above obviously. That said, weight training certainly isn't a waste of time. As I said above, reading through the stickies would do you a lot of good... here is one post found in the stickies pertaining to your question here. Usually I'd simply so "go read the damn stickies" but I was informed by "management" that they want more coddling around here:
http://weight-loss.fitness.com/weight-loss-diary/8425-journey-not-destination-68.html#post207119
This post comes from this thread which I highly suggest you browse through?
http://weight-loss.fitness.com/topic/11337-words-wisdom.html
Should I just focus on cardio until I loose some more weight and can focus on lifting?
