Steve, you are such an asset to this board, so I am going to pick your brain too...
I just joined the gym, increased my cals to 1500 (from 1200), when I go there I really am not sure what to do! So far this week on Mon tues wed and thursday I went and stayed for about an hour and a half. I either do the treadmill at 4 mph with a small incline for 45 inutes or the elliptical set on the Interval mode for 30 minutes. Then I will do the different machines, such as the hip adjuction thing, the row machine and various other machines like this with the weights at 30 pounds, doing about 30 reps. So I have really no rhyme or reason. What would you suggest? I really want to tone and tighten things up!
Thanks very much for the kind words, and glad you find me to be an ass.
I mean asset!!!
First, congrats on your weight loss to date. You should be extremely proud!
How exactly did you go about losing that weight. And are you still losing? Plateaued?
Nutrition is still the primary focus. Of course exercise is important too, it just sits in the backseat when compared to your nutritional strategy. I am glad to hear you bumped up your cals. That actually isn't too far off from where I would like you to see, speaking in terms of caloric intake. How has the ramp up treated you? Any weight gain?
You are doing a lot of LISS (low intensity, steady state) cardio. I would rather see you throw in a session of HIIT (high intensity interval training), if you are conditioned enough to do so. If not, stick with one to two sessions of regular interval training until you are conditioned enough to add in some HIIT.
Also, do your cardio AFTER you train with weights.
Ideally, you should be doing one session of HIIT per week (and this is specific to you and no one else reading this) and one to two sessions of LISS per week.
With regards to weight training, I am really not a fan of machines. They just aren't optimal, and in some instances, can be detrimental. And high rep stuff sucks. I imagine you are doing it thinking high reps "tone." This is very important for you to understand: There is no such thing as toning through direct stimulation exercises. Actually, I like to say, "There is no such thing as toning, period." You mentioned you do hip adjunction machine. I think you mean, hip adduction. And I bet you are doing that to "target" your thighs. Right? If so, that is not going to work. The only way to firm up, tone up, or whatever else you want to call it is to lose more fat. Doing so exposes the muscles you have under the subcutaneous fat.
You see, weight training either builds muscle, or it doesn't. And fat does not turn into muscle. And muscle, even if you are building more, will remain under the fat until you expose it through fat loss. AND, you can't build muscle unless you are in a caloric surplus. AND, you can't lose fat unless you are in a caloric deficit.
Haha, a lot of lessons to be learned in just a few short sentences..... so let this sink in and then, ask some more questions. I am sure you will have more.