Stop weight lifting?

I tend to do alot of heavy lifting or atleast heavy for me.  I do a mixture of free weights on the ball, pull ups, and machine weights.

I really do not want to lose 3% body fat and stay the same weight.  I think I done alot of that recently but frankly every lbs you weight you have to move requires energy and put more wear on the body.  I am worried though if I go all cardio I will burn my msucle and not my bodyfat which will work against me too.  I want to have a big furence but its not super important to me.

 I know diet will be the biggest factor and I now hungry all the time which in some ways is a good sign. 

 I read there is no point in low weight/ high rep and your better off jsut with cardio.

Oh boy... this is where I get to reach to my book shelf to refresh my memory and have fun....

How many calories in wt lifting?

Depends on your wieght and how vigorous...
Vigorous = 6 mets
Light = 3 mets

Decide on your MET... then plug into

(MET x wt in kg) x (Min/60min) = # kcal expended

However, this is a rough estimate not knowing your RMR Met equivalent.

Did I answer that?

So the title of the thread asks "Stop Weightlifting?"

MHO....

NO!!!!!!

As noted in above posts... increased muscle mass will raise your RMR and you will burn more calories at rest... in the long run you will drop in weight AND BF... 

You may want to consider some other options that will increase caloric expenditure and continue with wieghts (and cardio together)...

1.)  Interval Training.... If you have access to a gym with TM and wts nearby.... hop on the TM for a few minutes and then do a set or two.... keep the wieght light but challenging and keep the HR up... increase that incline and speed EACH time you return to the TM....

2.)  Agility Training will target muscle groups you forgot you have and keep your heart rate up.

3.)  Super Setting & Compound Exercises... There's nothing wrong with lifting lighter wieghts at higher rep's.... Here's the example I give tweens wanting to wieght train... "If Bif lifts 40lbs eight times, and Waldo lifts 20 lbs 16 times... who has done more work... neither, they both lifted 320lbs... but Waldo did it with a lot less stress on his joints at any given time."

Hope this helps a little....

Oh, and don't forget to change up your routine every 6 wks or so, don't let your body get comfy with it, that's when you can get in a rutt and progress can slow.

First, Do not stop lifting.

I hate to even suggest this because I have firsthand seen this program severely abused. 

yeah training for 72 hours of running and walking and lost of endurance is not a good thing.  Though being 30 lbs lighter would help alot.

I know... great minds and all

It sounds good except for apart of an article  just read.

"When you start a very low carb diet you cut off the body's supply of dietary carbohydrate and this leads to a rapid emptying of these liver and muscle glycogen stores. And when you lose that glycogen, you also lose the associated water. That's the reason why, during the first couple days of a low carb diet, you lose weight so dramatically. It's also why you may feel slimmer and lose "inches." You haven't lost fat. You've simply dumped the water out of your muscles and liver. "

whole thing is here.

http://www.phlaunt.com/lowcarb/19058097.php

My 2 cents....

The beautiful thing about weight lifting is that your body burns calories for hours after your work out, that is an advantage over cardio.  The key is to find a nice balance so that you are maintaining the mass and density of the muscle you already have, without adding any bulk.  This first of all is going to require the right mixture of proteins and carbs in your diet and keep your calorie expenditure higher than your intake.

I would recommend a program that conists of 3 excercises per body part, once per week.  For example... Mon (chest/Triceps), Wed (Back/Biceps), Fri (Legs/Shoulders), I always throw in some core training everyday I lift.  I lift about 65-75 % of my max and do 4 full sets of 20.  If you can't do 20 then start at 12 or 15, as long as your muscles are fatigued when your done.  if the weight becomes easy, increase your intensity... not so much the weight.  Remember, the goal is burning fat and increasing cardio, not bulking up.  I like to mix it up alot as to not do the same exercises each time (tricking my body so it always has to adapt) and I love to superset.  Similar to Crossfit..for example, use a straight bar and dumbells on bench, as soon as you are done with the set on bar go straight to dumbells with no rest between.

This type of workout forces your body to adapt quickly and forces your cardio to improve because you are not allowing it to recover before moving on.  Your body has to learn to move oxygen rapidly through the dense muscle.  Don't want to preach and I am certainly no expert.  The last thing I would like to point out is, the more bulk/mass you have ... your body has to feed oxygen to those muscles, this makes you fatigue much faster, which is not good for an endurance athlete.

that article is pretty sketchy. I've personally seen massive amounts of change in somebody on the velocity diet. I had no problems with regaining weight ( I did gain back about 5lbs, but, lack of sodium during the diet more than the lack of carbs had to do with this water weight gain.) 

Still, no matter what diet plan / training plan you choose, ultimately success will hinge on what you do AFTER these 10 weeks are over.  Without a lifestyle change, any diet is pointless, and yo-yo dieting is more dangerous than being overweight.  

Most importantly be safe

BeginnerMan - 2008-11-18 4:02 PM do.not.stop.

I kinda stopped but only because I lost my job and my gym is not that close to home.  I thinking about joining a cheap gym alot closer to my house.  switching gyms can be expensive and not sure how long I will be out.  Hopely not too long.

I know this is a little late but I thought I could add a little to this thread.  In your first post you said "then again I do not want to be too strong."  Why???  There is no downside to being stronger.  Maybe you meant that you don't want to gain muscle mass, or to be too "bulky".  That's a different matter.  But increasing strength shouldn't hamper your goals, whether it is weight loss, injury prevention, rehab, or race performance.   Something to try, if you've made it back to a gym, is to keep your repetitions low, as in 4-8 per set.  Above that and you get into the so-called hypertrophic range which would increase your muscle mass and you've said that isn't what you want to do.  Those numbers aren't accepted by everyone, but it's got some pretty good anecdotal evidence and some ok actual studies that supports it.

 Like everyone said, weightlifting will continue to burn calories after you stop the workout.  In terms of strength training and aerobic conditioning, studies have shown (but not proven) that if you add a strength training program to a conditioning program, the aerobic gains suffer a little.  You still make gains, but not as much as if you did not participate in the weightlifting workouts.  However, there's not as much of an effect of aerobic conditioning on strength gains.  So, it really depends on your goals there.