Trying to lose weight + gain muscle

[Mike]

I weighed about 235 a few months ago and have gotten down to around 212 right now after running/working out and now I've been on the South Beach diet for about a week now and it seems to be working out well. I've been going to the gym everyday for the past week and I have been doing elliptical/treadmill for around 30-45 minutes then lifting for a little bit.

My question is if I'm doing elliptical/treadmill around 5 or 6 days a week and I'm looking to lose weight mostly and gain muscle after I lose the weight, how many days a week should I be lifting? I am looking to get down to 180 pounds but I am worried if I stop lifting completely I'll lose muscle and have to "start over" again in lifting.

Thanks
-Mike

Edit:

If it helps I've basically been eating eggs/canadian bacon for breakfast in the morning, for snack I usually have a low-fat cheese stick, lunch is usually chicken breast, salad, or turkey wrapped in lettuce, dinner is some type of low-fat steak or chicken or fish. I've completely cut out fast food and soda for the past couple months and thats seemed to help alot along with drinking lots of water. I'm basically trying to follow the "guidelines" for the South Beach diet though.

[Sportsmedjosh]

Hi Mike, my first suggestion to you would be to get off the south beach diet. It seems that you have the dedication to what it takes and you will really need to get the most out of your meals. I would highly suggest lift a min of 3 days 4 days would be even better. If you want to lose the weight correcting your eating patterns will be the biggest change to your weight loss. Running and cardio is great but in the big picture it really doesn't do that much in terms of burning calories. Weight lifting is also going to be important. What type of resistant training are you currently doing?

[Mike]

Thanks for the response...a couple questions:

1) Why exactly should I get off the diet? What different foods would you suggest eating otherwise, I feel like it is working well for me but it is a bit difficult to follow as the first few weeks don't allow any rice/bread/pasta/carbs

2)For resistance training...I don't really know what you mean by that but if you mean lifting then on upper body days I do bench press, incline bench, bicep curls, dumbell press, triceps and then on lower days I would do leg press, calf raisers and a few other leg machine work outs.

Basically my goal right now is to lose weight, I have good amount of muscle in my shoulders/chest/arms area and I don't want to lose a lot of it. Also along with cardio I do crunches if that makes a difference.

[Sportsmedjosh]

1. Any diet that doesn't allow or calls for restricting carbs is one you should never follow. Carbs or CHO are your bodies basic unit of energy. When you limit them in a diet such as this or in atkins for example. You severly impair your brain functions and also you body will begin to break down muscle and use that. Which will in turn slow down your metabolism. Although you would lose weight, this is not the way to go about it.

2. That is example what I mean.

[Mike]

Alright, thanks for explaining that. I am just confused because one of my friends had a lot of success with this diet...he weighed about 300+ pounds and is now down to around 250 within a couple months and looks like a different person.

Anyways so you think I should be lifting atleast 3 out of the 6 days I work out even though I am more focused on losing weight right now...my original plan was to get down to around 180 or so then start lifting daily to gain some more muscle.

[Sportsmedjosh]

A good combo is always weight lifting and diet I feel.

[Mike]

Bump on my old thread. I'm down to about 202 now but I never really got a clear answer on the losing weight/lifting question. I've been doing cardio on the elliptical and treadmill for around 40 minutes a day everyday a week and lift about 4 days.

I'm wondering if lifting only about 2 days a week could help lose weight quicker since I won't be lifting/adding muscle as often?

[Sportsmedjosh]

If your talking about just losing weight yes it will. However if you want to get a better result I would look at doing both.

the main reason is if you are just doing cardio and food restriction your are not taking in excess food and also burning more calories without building muscle mass. As we know muscle is more dense than fat.

So by not building up the muscle mass you will be losing both fat and muscle if you reduce your weight training.

I hope that makes sense. I know it was kind of a scatter brain response.

[themossman]

I hate to keep recommending it, but as a 'newbie' I had tremendous success with Body for Life. It was a simple program and simplified cardio, weightlifting, and diet. I followed the cardio and weightlifting to the letter, but slid a little on the recommended 'diet'. It's really about changing your habits and slowly learning what to do regarding your food intake. I have never been on a diet, I just changed the way that I eat.