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Originally Posted by Bryce979
I lost 50 lbs in 5 months maybe 6 give or take by lifting weights alone. My cardio became heavybag workouts. But you gotta realize its no quick way to do it. I became far more toned at a higher weight when I stopped supplements. You gotta eat right and give your body time to adjust. You can lose weight and still have a fat feel. Muscle is more dense than fat.
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This is an example of the best possible 'toning' strategy. 'Toning' means you can see well developed muscle definition. That means grow muscle and lose fat. For people new to exercise that's easy to to and thses are the rules:
Lose fat: Burn more calories than you eat
Cardio such as boxing bag or another type assists in burning calories, but it really comes down to how much you eat.
Gaining or maintaining muscle: Resistance exercise and adequate protein intake
Building the muscle requires high protein diet. If you do not have the building blocks, the muscle can't be built.
Which direction are you going?
If you have excess fat stores and 'toning' involves losing weight, you need to consume less calories than you burn. Doing some cardio assists with the calorie burn, which means you can eat a bit more than if you don't do cardio.
The problem with losing weight is keeping the muscle you have. The body will use muscle tissue if it isn't being used. Particularly if you don't get adequate protein, the body will take its vital requirements from your skeletal muscle tissue. Hence, resistance exercise and high protein intake is optimal for 'toning' goals to maintain or gain muscle mass whist losing excess fat stores.
Gaining weight
If you are skinny and somewhat underweight, you are fortunate because you only need to grow some muscle to look 'toned'.
To put on the muscle mass you have to consume more calories than you burr and do enough resistance exercise to stimulate growth. As mentioned, if you don't get enough calories you will to gain any weight, and if you do not get enough protein, you will not have the essential building blocks to build muscle tissue. If you do not use the muscle, of course it will not grow.
Hence, to gain weight as muscle mass you need more calories than you burn, a high protein intake, and reasonably strenuous resistance training.
Staying the same weight
If you are withing the normal weight range for your gender an height, and you don't need to lose of gain weight, and what to look more 'toned' you need get a higher percentage of muscle mass and a lower percentage of fat.
To stay the same weight you need eat the same number of calories as you burn. To stimulate muscle increase you do resistance training with high protein intake. The body will adapt to the strain by gaining the muscle, but since there are no extra calories, the body will use fat stores to balance the muscle gain as you gain muscle but remain the same weight.
Of course, include a wide variety of veg, fruit, nuts and seeds for all your vits and minerals.
General conclusion
Diet
In all cases, a high protein diet is optimal. If you lose weight you have more calories than you burn. If you gain weight you neen more calories than you burn, If you stay the same weight you need the same calorse as you burn. Regardless of which of these three suits your needs, high protein intake prevents muscle loss and enhanced muscle gain.
Exercise
Resistance training should be the essential aspect while cardio unessential when it comes to 'toning' goals. Toning just means less fat/more muscle. Losing weight happens when you eat less calories than you burn and gaining is the opposite. Cardio has untold benefits to cardiovascular health, cognitive preservation, longevity etc, so all exercise approached
should incude cardio, however, cardio is not essential to 'toning', so make resistance training the top priority if 'toning' is your goal.
The main benefit of cardio with respect to 'toning' is it burns a lot of calories, which means you can eat more especially if your toning goal involves fat loss.
The underweight may find it difficult to eat adequate quantities of food to to support their required excess calorie intake, and if that is the case, then cardio makes it harder. Indeed in my profession I do not prescribe excess cardio to the underweight, and keep that minimal.
Final word
Appropriate calories. Adequate protein. Veg. Resistance exercise.