How to lessen intensity, maintain fitness & strength

Stacy

Cathlete
I want to lower the intensity of my workouts for a bit and also work on flexibility. I'm recovering from a shoulder injury but have no specific restrictions at this point. I'm just a bit gun shy. I have put on a few pounds on my alread pear shaped body and I'm not happy about this all over layer of extra fluff. I'm planning on Ultimate Yogi 2-3 days a week and want to know what I should supplement with to gain back some strength and blast some of this fat off. I'm interested in the workout aspect of my goal, not the diet. I have that figured out already. I plan on working out T, W, Th, Sat and Sun with rest days on Monday and Friday. I'm not sure if doing metabolic workouts would be enough to build any strength but I think they'd be good to help with fat loss. Or maybe total body workouts would be good?? Any thoughts, specific workouts, words of encouragement? I feel like the lower intensity may not make this fluff disappear even with my diet in check.
 
I feel like the lower intensity may not make this fluff disappear even with my diet in check.

Stacy, if it were me choosing between total body and metabolic as you asked, I would opt for 2-3 total body workouts per week and then add in walking for cardio. The total body workouts will help you gain more strength than metabolic, as metabolic training is mostly cardio in its effect and won't do much to add any muscle back. Then you can use walking as stress relief and as a gentle way (and IMO enjoyable way) to get some additional movement in. Plus Cathe's metabolic workouts have a huge shoulder component so that might aggravate your healing shoulder.

Most important is your diet. You know all the sayings: it's 90% diet, abs are made in the kitchen, you can't out exercise a poor diet, etc etc. Plenty of people lose weight by simply controlling their dietary intake, without doing any exercise at all. Obviously they also lose muscle, so exercise is needed if you want to have a healthy body composition. Plus, I find my hunger is more manageable when I've reduced the frequency of high intensity workouts.

TL;DR you can ABSOLUTELY achieve your goal by managing your eating habits and exercising moderately.
 

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