To cut first or lift/cut?

[Hope]

Hi, all

I am 38 yr old male and I have been skinny fat/fat all my life. However, right now at 5'9'' and 92kg ,I am at the highest weight of my life. This year I gained 10 kgs due to antipsychotic meds for bipolar. I am very depressed about this now and want to improve my health. Would you suggest cutting weight to 70-75 kgs and then start lifting or start with cardio and weigh lifting combo. Keep in mind I quickly gain weight. Pics added

 

[LeanEngineer]

Get diet in place first. Caloric deficit and develop a lifting planning with cardio. Chatgpt can assist with developing this as well

 

[Smont]

Hi, all

I am 38 yr old male and I have been skinny fat/fat all my life. However, right now at 5'9'' and 92kg ,I am at the highest weight of my life. This year I gained 10 kgs due to antipsychotic meds for bipolar. I am very depressed about this now and want to improve my health. Would you suggest cutting weight to 70-75 kgs and then start lifting or start with cardio and weigh lifting combo. Keep in mind I quickly gain weight. Pics added

Most ppl don't have the balls to put up a picture when they say they are in shape. So no need for the sad face, your taking steps forward.

When I have people who mostly need to drop BF I tell them to start with light cardio, even a 15min walk in the mornings and get on some kind of basic 3 day workout. Even if your just picking 2-3 exercises on those days.

Eliminate the junk food, sodas, ect from your diet and try to focus on just eating real food. Lean meat, fruit, vegetables and maybe a little rice or potatoes here and there.


There's 2 sure fired ways to lose body fat, you gotta move a little more and eat a little less. And steps don't have to be huge. I definitely think anyone who cares about the way they look should be lifting weights regardless of their goal. But don't try to dive in with the kitchen sink approach or it usually backfires.


15min walks before breakfast or with your morning coffee is a great step 1

 

[cheftepesh1]

Most ppl don't have the balls to put up a picture when they say they are in shape. So no need for the sad face, your taking steps forward.

When I have people who mostly need to drop BF I tell them to start with light cardio, even a 15min walk in the mornings and get on some kind of basic 3 day workout. Even if your just picking 2-3 exercises on those days.

Eliminate the junk food, sodas, ect from your diet and try to focus on just eating real food. Lean meat, fruit, vegetables and maybe a little rice or potatoes here and there.


There's 2 sure fired ways to lose body fat, you gotta move a little more and eat a little less. And steps don't have to be huge. I definitely think anyone who cares about the way they look should be lifting weights regardless of their goal. But don't try to dive in with the kitchen sink approach or it usually backfires.


15min walks before breakfast or with your morning coffee is a great step 1

Both above are great advice. You need to focus on one before the other. You can’t out train a bad diet so I would start there.

 

[Dustin07]

I might be misunderstanding people in this thread a bit, but I don't see cutting as making a decision between cardio OR lifting. I'd 100% recommend both, but that said:

kitchen sink approach or it usually backfires.


15min walks before breakfast or with your morning coffee is a great step 1

those two notes right there make a lot of sense. I know for me personally my gym sessions are usually 60-90 minutes 4-6 times a week. When I'm strength training or bulking, they're all with a barbell. When I'm cutting I throw in 10-20 minutes of cardio before and/or after. so the total time in the gym stays about the same, the biggest difference being that I'm trading some weight lifting time for cardio time and my weight lifting becomes more bodypart (bodybuilder split) centric, vs PL. / strength centric.

Like yesterday, I made a very hard effort to have 10,000 steps in before my evening lifting session. evening lifting was:
10 minutes incline treadmill
35 minutes of lifting, all shoulder specific
10 mintues incline treadmill

done...

 

[ironviking]

TL;DR - approach with weights and cardio combo seems solid but go with weights if you have to choose, above all else get your diet in order and geared toward weight loss. Best of luck to you.

I take a different approach. I'm not a fan of using cardio for weight loss. Cardio is great for heart, lung, circulatory, and other health reasons but for weight loss it is only so so. Think 1hour of cardio burns around 300 cals, you can cut that 300 kcals from your diet pretty easily. Strength training will burn a tremendous amount of calories and help you retain or build muscle mass and other lean tissue. Strength training will also help with those other aspects of fitness mentioned. The guidance most weight loss clinics and wellness doctors like Peter Attia is take your total time you have to workout dedicate 50% of that to strength training and the other half to low level cardio and if you have to choose one over the other go with strength training.
Diet is paramount when trying to lose or gain weight. I'd advise finding a metabolic rate calculator (tons online) and maybe even a macro calculator to get a good range for where your caloric intake should be at and shoot for 500 under maintenance daily - again tons of apps out there that can help you do this. This may take looking up the nutritional info on some foods and even weighing them out. It may seem daunting at first but go easy in to it, don't try to change everything at once, and be patient with yourself.
When **** got tough for me I always remembered the quote from Art Williams - I’m Not Telling You It’s Going to Be Easy, I’m Telling You It’s Going to Be Worth it