does body fat decrease as you weight train and build muscle, or does it stay the same??

If you follow a strict diet, it should decrease, but it you don't, then you will just build muscle under the fat and you will never get the toned look.

I'm pretty sure you lose fat while you weight train. My friend started lifting a few months ago, and does some cardio as well, and he lowered his body fat percentage from 15% to 12%, and is still decreasing. He looks really great too.

The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn. So you would decrease in body fat from weight training. But should still do cardio to look after you heart and the rest of your vitals.

I'd say cardio burns more fat, but if all you do is cardio then theres no muscles underneath the fat you burn off. If all you do is cardio it really hurts your "gains" in the body composition you want. good luck to ya

Cardio burns fat, but so does muscle. I think your body burns 300 more calories per 1 pound of muscle, or something like that. So a good combo of both is really good.

Yea it does decrease, not as fast as if you were to do cardio though.

Weight lifting is just as important as cardio, if not more. It speeds up your metabolism more, gives you a toned look which would be very hard if not impossible with cardio alone, if all that is done is cardio your really hurting everything your working for. Once you get to the lower body fat % then its very very hard to gain muscle and lose body fat at the same time, it also depends on your body type though. And stewart I highly doubt that. Thats a lot of calories and I am certain thats not right. It cannot be done right without proper diet and excercise. Im just ranting now. have a nice day.

stewart ... 300 calories more burned after how long? i think your stats need some more stats to back them up. I know there are some numbers floating around like that, but i'm not exactly sure what they are.

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doing aerobic training greatly increases the amount of muscles in your legs and arms. Therefore the more muscles that are developed the more fat you burn....

but I heard that prolonged cardio actually begins to shed muscle

Remember that unless you're using calipers then you probably have a lot more muscle then you think. Building up your muscles will help increase your metabolism and therefore creating fat burning while also having something under the fat there. Also still include cardio because it does also promote fat loss.