I lost the battle (getting to 269 by last Friday), but I won the war. Took a few days longer to get myself back on track, but I got there.
I'm sure the science is out there, but I've found that cardio in the morning seems to have a bigger effect than cardio at night. Maybe getting everything going in the morning keeps you running at a higher rate, but exercising at night and then going to sleep may kill that effect. Not sure, but that's my working theory.
Right now I'm doing 20 minutes of rowing in the morning and then 10 minutes of boxing (working a heavy bag and double-end bag). The rower is great exercise, but takes continuous focus, not like an elliptical where you can zone out, so the 20 minutes on the rower seems harder than an hour on an elliptical. But I already have one at home (as well as the boxing setup), so I'm just going to have to get used to it. Doing something you don't like builds character anyway.
At night I'm doing an hour on an elliptical machine.
Anyway, the point was that I seem to see more results from the 20 to 30 minutes of intense cardio in the morning, than I do from the 60 minutes at night.
But those may be skewed statistics, because when I'm dedicated enough to work out in the morning, I'm usually also on my best eating habits. When I'm feeling lazy, the morning workouts are the first thing to go, followed by a slightly "looser" diet.
If every other month I can hit a dedicated spurt and drop 20 lbs, then maintain that weight for my lazy month, I can live with that. As long as this month is the one where I drop 20. I'm still set on making my goal of being under 240 by March 24th.
-Mike
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It may have something to do with High Intensity Interval Training too...perhaps you are simply working at a higher intensity on your morning workout than your evening workout.
ReplyDeleteI used to do 60 minutes on the elliptical, but my bodybugg start showing the caloric burn fall off quite a bit. Now when I jog even for shorter periods of time, but at a higher intensity than it takes to do the elliptical, I'm getting a much higher burn per minute.
I bet if you try and absolutely shred the elliptical in the evening, you'll see your burn rate coming back.
I am so happy to have found the blog link to this blog in your post on apex! You are so inspirational you should put it in more of your posts.
ReplyDeleteI am glad to be able to follow you hear and wish you the best of luck!!!!!!!!
Kyle & Amy:
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments, its good to know you're out there.
-Mike