I am finding 45-60 minutes a day with weight training and then another 30 minutes for cardio are just too much. I don't enjoy exercise and I find that I am really dreading it and making up excuses why I can't work out. I wouldn't mind doing 30 minutes of weights and maybe 20-30 minutes of cardio a day but is that going to give me results?

Yup, that would be fine.

I would stick to at least 30 minutes of cardio though.

Have you ever thought about combining them to save time?

Sometimes, I do it when I don't have time for both.

I do all kinds of different workouts, but one efficient way to combine them is keeping hand weights close to you while on the treadmill or whatever cardio machine you are using. (Or if you are walking/running outside ...u can still do this.)

Do 3 minutes of walking/running...whatever, get off (keept the machine going so you don't take more than 1 minute) and do a set of reps; (Like a set (12 reps) of bicep curls) do another 3 minutes, then off for another set (like a set of shoudler presses...whatever). You can work lower body too...lunches, squats, etc.

Just keep doing this over and over until your time runs out. I do it for at least 45 minutes to an hour, but I work out a lot and only do this when I can squeeze in just an hour.

This will keep your heart rate up, so you will still be getting cardio while you are lifting.

Then, you are DONE with it all

Great idea Cherry! I read recently in Prevention about a 3-2-1 method of 3 minutes cardio, 2 minutes weights and 1 minute of abs. I didn't try it because I thought it would be hard to keep track of the minutes. Maybe I could just buy a cheap timer? Thanks!

No problem!

I just use the timer on the elliptical or treadmill!

Gumbygirl - I don't spend more than 25/30 minutes per day on a workout. Most days that's weight training. One or two days out of the week I do cardio. This was exactly how I lost most of my excess weight. I found when I cut back the cardio and increased the weight training, the pounds and inches came off much faster. This is always the case with me - my weight loss had recently stalled, but as soon as I dropped the cardio back, I was making progress again.

By the way, "cardio" doesn't have to mean the treadmill, bike, or elliptical machine. I often do high-rep military presses and bodyweight squats instead of one of those machines. You can also throw in things like jumping jacks, pushups (assisted if you need it), or some bodyweight drill work like football players do.

That is a good plan, opting for high intensity cardio. I like doing 500M sprints on the concept2 rowing machine. Most powerlifters do sled dragging or some other form of intense cardio work for their "GPP". We should all do something to train our hearts, but not so much as to hurt our bodybuilding efforts.

I think that long bouts of moderate to low intensity cardio are counter productive to muscle building. If you want to lose weight faster cut your calories, rather than increase your cardio.

Everything I know, I learned from Dr. Squat. (But I have been checking out those other links you gave me.)

Hear, hear. We HATESES anything that's counterproductive to muscle building.

Hmmm, one thing we need to keep in mind is that most overweight women don't care a whole heck of a lot about muscle building per se. Of course it goes without saying that it's important to weight train while losing fat in order to preserve muscle mass -- and I'm the first one to preach the importance of weights along with cardio and clean nutrition. But realistically, many overweight women have a ton of lean body mass to start with just due to the muscle building caused by walking around every day carrying 50 or 100 extra pounds. What most overweight women are looking for is fat loss -- and cardio - in my opinion and experience - is essential for fat loss. If some LBM is lost along the way, it's usually not a big deal because they still have plenty to support a higher metabolism.

Of course, there are those (lucky ) individuals like Shannon who can lose just fine without much or even any cardio, but women like that are few and far between in my experience. And it's a whole different story for men like Robert, of course.

I attended a conference in NYC last month where a paper was presented about what kind of program works best for long term weight loss and maintenance. The answer, according to this study, was diet and 280 minutes of cardio (the study specifically focused on the treadmill) per week, which works out to 40 minutes a day. I work in a large gym with over 16,000 members and have found that to be dead on with both my personal experience and that of my clients and other gym members.

A long time ago, we at LWL came up with what we call the Holy Trinity of weight loss: weights, clean eating and cardio. My opinion is that all three are essential to successful long-term weight loss and maintenance and I preach it to every woman who walks in my gym. Again, let me reiterate that there are exceptions to this - everyone's different - and like everything else in the diet world, we each have to discover what works best for us as individuals.

Well, I can't really add much to what Meg said...

I do know I follow the holy trinity though - which includes CARDIO. (I happen to enjoy cardio about 99% of the time, so no biggie).

But don't take MY word for it - Tom Venuto (in his book Burn the Fat Feed The Muscle advocates cardio - especially for folks with what he calls "stubborn body fat". (Chapter 16 is devoted to the subject of cardio: "Cardio Training Secrets for Maximum Fat Loss: Why It's better to Burn the Fat than Starve the Fat").

We're all different though - some can lose weight easily without cardio, I imagine. But a lot of us who have a lot of weight to lose, well, we NEED cardio (along with proper nutrition and weight training).

But if something's working for you, if you aren't doing any cardio and the pounds are coming off, then great! However, if you aren't having any luck then you might consider adding some cardio in...

Preserving muscle mass isn't a very useful goal for fat loss, though it is important from a metabolic standpoint.

Of course. The more muscle you have, the more fat you burn, which is why I weight train. Meaning, I don't want to just preserve muscle mass, I want to gain it, because that's the fastest and most efficient way to lose fat.

Cardio (on machines or doing GPP as I described above) has its place for heart and lung health, but it is not the magic bullet for fat loss.

And I can assure everyone that there was nothing of luck involved in my weight loss. I had PCOS and a wretched family history of obesity, and was diagnosed as being pre-diabetic. For the first six months, cardio and weight training were adequate for weight loss, if somewhat slow. My problem became one of boredom, and I soon found I was drawn like a magnet to heavier weight training. It was a happy discovery that I can stick to that (incorporating some GPP) and lose fat at an even faster rate than before, provided I'm eating cleanly enough.

Gumbygirl, while I wanted to disagree (respectfully) with Meg, I recognize that she is a PT by profession and certification, and I am not. I can certainly understand if you want to take her word for it. And I would suggest reading this article by the famous Mistress:

http://www.stumptuous.com/cms/displayarticle.php?aid=37

Good luck to you, whatever you decide.

From a recent change in my workouts I have found what is beginning to feel like the magic bullet. Interval training. Keeping my heart rate up with 1 minute intervals of cardio between sets of lifting. I look toned and I am losing weight faster that any attempts I have made in the last 5 years. I am spending right at an hour 4 days a week with this workout and one hour long hike per week.

Ooh, sounds like a good plan. What do you do for the 1 minute of cardio?

Not Meg and not a PT here...but I am familiar with that article by Krista Scott Dixon.

Maybe I'm reading it differently but she isn't 'dissing' cardio in the article contained in the above link. Take this paragraph for instance:

and this sentence:

Krista's site also has an interesting article on fartlek training - aka interval training (in last night's Spinning class, we did fartleks part of the time and it was awesome BTW) - a snippet:

So judging from that, I wouldn't exactly say that Mistress Krista is 'anti-cardio' - she's just an advocate of EFFECTIVE cardio, done correctly (of course you COULD email her...).

I'd say it's no different than what we've said here all along about the LWL Holy Trinity - Nutrition/Weights/Cardio.

Shannon I am following Jillian Michaels plan from her book Winning by Losing. She recommends a combination of jumping jacks, mountain climbers, and jump rope. I am still working up to all that. I do those at the beginning of my hour but as I progress and get tired I start hopping on the treadmill set at an incline of 8.5 and a speed of about 3.5. The last 30 minutes I pant my way through the workout. I do recover a bit during the lifting, but honestly, it is a tough workout though doable especially if you modify where you need to. The other thing that I think makes this such a fat burner is that every day you work your legs. Not the same muscles, but you are working big muscles every day, you also do abs every day. Well not every day, but 4 days a week. I have been at it going on 5 weeks and every two weeks she pumps it up a little bit. It seems like the best of both worlds, not the mind numbing repetition of an hour on a cardio machine, but still it is aerobic within the structure of lifting.

MrsJim - I agree 100% on the interval training. It's far more effective than what I consider "traditional" cardio, which I guess is why I don't lump it in under the cardio umbrella. However, too much of a good thing is still too much, and I think that's the problem Gumbygirl is having. It does become an overtraining/recovery issue at some point.

Krista's recommendations consist of about 20-30 minutes of cardio 3x/week. (The stuff she describes like interval training and racing to catch the bus are much more like GPP than they are traditional cardio.) I can get on board with her rec on that if I have to, but I've found that for fat loss I don't need to do that much. All other things being equal with consistent weight training, a little GPP and proper eating, I can lose fat quite well with one 15-20 minute session of jogging or the elliptical machine each week. And as I said above, I am by no means some genetically blessed freak of nature.

FWIW, I was not trying to distort the article to suit my own twisted arguments. I don't think she's anti-cardio either. I may go ahead and email her for my own clarification, because many people have read this article and interpreted it in very different ways.

Thanks for the tip, ledom. Might be I should get that book.