How Often?
 

Hello, Chicks!

Lately, I've been doing a much better job of keeping up my calorie deficient (eating 100-200 calories below my estimated BMR) via diet alone. At the beginning of my journey, I was working out 30-40 minutes, a mixture of cardio and strength training, every day of the week. Sometimes twice!

Now that I am almost 15lb from goal and slowly coming to grips with my eating habits, I feel like it is time to give my body a break and reduce my exercise to...well.

The thing is, I'm not sure where middle ground is. I'm an extremist. In order to start exercising, I had to go to NO exercise to exercise EVERY DAY. Now, I'm finally learning at least some moderation and self control, and I feel that I could easily accept a 3 or 4 or whatever-times-a-week schedule.

So, Chicks. How often do you workout, and what do you do? (Cardio/Weights/etc.) If at all possible, I'd like to stick to doing my usual cardio routine (treadmill on incline for 20 min, 10 min warm up on bike, 5 min of stretching). If I take up a MWF workout schedule, should I lift every session or just one of the three? Or is three days not enough, typically?

Thanks for your suggestions, exercising Chicks. :D

I try to workout six or seven days a week. Since I have a fully loaded schedule (I work full-time and leave there for class, and don't get home from class until 9-11 pm depending on the day) I can't workout as much as I'd like. Right now, I'm working out in the mornings before I get ready for work by doing yoga for 50 minutes. Then I go the gym on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday to do 65 minutes of cardio (60 minutes on the treadmill or bike or a combination) plus a five minute cooldown.

How much time do you have to devote to each of your workouts? I see nothing wrong with a MWF schedule as long as you're spending enough time there. Since there's a day of rest between your workouts, I'd recommend combining cardio and weights at every single session. For example, you could do upper body on Monday, lower body on Wednesday, and total body on Friday. That way each muscle group is getting worked on twice a week. I highly advise against doing weights on just one of those days if you're really wanting to see results.

I'm maintaining and I exercise 6 days a week. I'm eating more calories than I was when I was losing but I haven't changed my workout routine.