Hi Lanaleo15, increasing your strength training does help with burning more fat. But I would actually recommend you to switch your cardio to high intensity aerobic exercises instead.

I've found that aerobics will burn more calories than any exercise because it involves many different movements and techniques that require the whole body. As your body loses weight as a whole, it's more effective to get all the areas moving.

If you want to reduce your body fat by half, then aerobics is definitely the better routine.

Aerobics sound great but I suffer 2 bad knees so the elliptical and bike are all I can do for cardio per my ortho. And we are trying to avoid a double knee surgery, so I stay away from all exercise classes and running etc. I know if I can loose weight a little quicker than it would improve my knees so much.

low weights and a lot of repetitions give you "endurance" muscles; that is not much bulk.

If you lift HEAVY WEIGHTS for only a few reps, then you will gain a lot of muscle mass.

If you are going mostly for weight loss, then lower weights but more reps may be the way to go.

On the other hand, a pound of muscle burns a lot more calories each day than a pound of fat. So replacing fat with muscle is a good way to lose weight, but you will bulk up a bit.


Soo, what is your long term goal?

you should still be able to get up to a relatively high speed on the elliptical even with bad knees no? I ask because heart rate correlates to calories burned.

I have a polar ft4 heart monitor that calculates calories burned based on my HR and how long I work out. which I like for the visual, it saves it as a file on the watch, and because I put it into my calculations on myfitnesspal.com along with my foods. (doing that if you aren't already might be helpful to make sure you are consuming the proper amounts based on your activity level, and of course creating a deficit will ensure weight loss)

here is a good article I found that I think would be helpful and relevant:
http://pfitblog.com/2013/10/12/the-fat-burning-zone-lies/

obviously all workouts would be modified for your specific needs. but I try to do my own versions of interval workouts like 2 miles on the treadmill, a couple weight machines, 2 miles on a bike, a couple weight machines, and then 2 miles on an elliptical but it's not a formula I switch it up often so I never get bored and so the heart rate has peaks and valleys.

worth looking into. good luck :-)