I've been doing some research on this site and I think I've read all of the forums on this subject, I've also googled this subject and I can't find a definitive answer. Here's the question/situation: I started my "journey" of losing weight back in August of 2007 and so far I've lost 45 lbs. I accomplished this task by eating 1,500 calories a day and making the best of those 1,500 calories by not eating out and cooking my own meals. I've also been training at first it was taebo but then I moved to the gym in December and I've been weight training ever since. I was doing a circuit training/super set type of workout where I would do a set of say biceps and then move to a set of legs, I would repeat that process three times, then I would rest. On the day were I wasn't at the gym I would do 30 mins of cardio, so that amounts to 3 days of lifting and 3 days of cardio and on sunday I would rest. Now for my question: I've reached a plateau and a few days ago I read something about increasing your weight to almost your "failure" point and doing one to two sets with 5-7 reps. I felt like this wasn't enough when I was doing it but I'm REALLY sore but I don't know if this is the best course of action for me. If I continue to lift heavy and do lower weights and couple with that with cardio will I lose weight. I plan to maintain the 1500 calories so I don't bulk up by eating more calories than I burn but I don't know if this is the best thing to do. Sorry I guess I had a lot to say about this.

Here's the definitive question: Is it Better to do low weights high reps or the other way around? what has worked for you guys?

Thanks for you help

High weight and low reps will build muscle size which in turn will burn more calories at rest. If you want the most out of your lifting session, I would opt for the lower reps. What you read is correct about trying to reach the muscular failure point. For all my sets, I try to expend my muscles to the point where I cannot do the last rep. Cheers

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There is no either/or, good/bad, better/worse.

How you exercise is completely dependent on your current state and your goals.

Here's an example for you:

You have two women both looking to lose fat. One is 300 lbs and the other is 130 lbs.

In terms of weight lifting, the heavier woman would probably benefit more from the circuit type of training where you use high volumes of work using lighter weights and short rest. In this event, you're turning it more or less into another form of cardiovascular exercise with a hint of strength training. The reason this would be optimal for her is pretty simple: at this stage in the game, burning the most amount of calories is going to be the primary factor that will contribute to weight loss and circuit training is going to accomplish that better than your traditional strength training routine of heavier weights, lower reps, and more rest.

The lighter woman might be better off (IMO definitely would be better off) by sticking with the more traditional strength training stuff I mentioned above. Not b/c of caloric expenditure so much, but more for what this type of stimulus/training does to the body. Primarily, it triggers muscle maintenance.... it gives your body a reason to hold on to the muscle you currently have. The closer you get to an ideal weight, the more probable muscle loss becomes. This is an important concept. (a) Muscle keeps your metabolism nice and healthy and (b) I think one of the major things most women looking to get tone do wrong is move to lighter and lighter weights and higher and higher reps following the misconception that this sort of training causes toning.

Toning is a function of fat loss and muscle maintenance. Losing weight is easy, just create a caloric deficit. But genetically average people, especially women, who aren't carrying a lot of fat carry the big risk of losing muscle if they don't take precautionary action; one of those things is proper, traditional strength training. Which, as I said above, goes against what gets passed around traditionally as good advice.

In essence, for the lighter woman, weight lifting transforms from something that gets your heart rate going and expends calories to more of something that triggers muscle maintenance. For her, diet and cardio will be the primary players in terms of establishing the caloric deficit. Don't get me wrong, traditional strength training burns calories too, but it's primary purpose in the 'program' isn't that.

Make sense? I feel like I'm rambling.

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