@seeker422 If you are doing alot of cardio your body is holding onto the belly fat as a back up as a fuel source, part of the cortisol response you get from running. Weight lifting is much more beneficial to fat burning. You could do calisthenics outside push ups, pull ups, dips, squats, lunges that sort of thing. There are tons of calisthenic programs available for free on you tube or google.
@seeker422 You clearly state it doesn’t seem to be getting me all the way there…….. you probably need a bigger deficit now if you want to lose more weight
@insanelydisturbed I’m eating less than 1200 calories a day i don’t think i can get bigger than that. Can’t lose the stubborn fat around my mid section.
@insanelydisturbed I’m not. Unless it’s hormones or there is some kind of issue going on i don’t know about. I struggle with what i believe to be severe IBS
@oddman Since always. The above exercises are vastly oversold on their usefulness for adding mass. They are better than nothing, they'll burn SOME calories, and they contribute to general fitness and athleticism. They are decent starting points for beginners and a good tool or building the habit of regular exercise but no one is getting big from them. You need to be approaching muscle failure in the 5-30rep range to stimulate hypertrophy. I'd argue for compound exercise like bodyweight squats and pushups you need to be on the lower end bc systemic fatigue is likely to be the cause of failure at the higher end of the rep range as opposed to muscle failure. These exercises become even less useful for hypertrophy when you incorporate them into HIIT where your V02 max is going to be the limiting factor.
I've been there and done these exercises by the hundreds for years. Wasted effort imo. Some people in the calisthenics community are about to get pretty impressive physiques but they are doing much more than just bodyweight squats and standard pushups. I'd bet those same guys would be equally or more impressive if they just focused on weight lifting but you gotta do what you enjoy.
@hamletcat Probably not though. "Do pushups and squats" with no progression model will not take you very far if anywhere. Like I said; it's a starting point and that can be good. I frequently rant about how no one talks about how important it is to train your brain to habitualize exercise. If that's why you're doing a given exercise and you're aware it's just the starting point and won't provide the result you're looking for then that's fine I just think it's important for people to have realistic expectations. People think they can do minimal work and get the results they want. When it doesn't happen they get discouraged and quit because "they tried exercise and it just doesn't work for them." The problem is the expectation does not correlate with the likely result.
