njschmidt's Journal, 19 Nov 10

I know how you feel. You've put in a maximum of effort for a what you feel is a minimum of gain. Now please, realize I'm not an expert. However, I have a number of friends who are armature body builders and personal trainers, and they all tell me the same thing: Cardio is overrated. I know there are 'fat burn' zones for cardio and all of this stuff, but when you look at the actual numbers behind the exercises, you see why they say that. A cardio work out burns calories while you're doing it and for a little while afterward, depending on how long and how intensely you work out. Your heart rate is up, you're sweating, everything good is going on. However, step off the machine and recover, and its over. Weight training, however, builds lean muscle mass. With lean muscle mass, you get more calories burned during the day because muscle burns (only a little) more calories than fat. Also, muscle is denser, so a muscular person who is 6', 200lbs is thinner than 6', 200lbs person who is mostly fat. I use cardio to warm up, ten minutes at most, then I do an hour of weight training, then twenty more minutes of cardio to increase endurance for my next session of weight training. Recently, my weight training has changed to include a lot of calisthenics; pull ups, push ups, sit ups, squat thrust. With those four exercises you hit every muscle in the body. Check out http://hundredpushups.com/. I'm doing that now. It's great. Sorry this was so long, I'm a bit long winded. Good luck. 

Thanks, Dand ... I have been working in weight training to my regimen. Specifically, I work one muscle group each day of the week (Monday-biceps, Tuesday-chest, Wednesday-back, Thursday-triceps, Friday-Legs, Saturday-abs). I'm hoping that the muscle gain will help with the weight loss (I can already tell I'm getting stronger, tearing down muscles and allowing them the protein and time to recover). The calisthenics you mentioned definitely look interesting ... I will be sure to check them out. Thanks again!