Cardio Fat loss vs Weights
 

About 4 months ago I started lifting weights very regularly and started eating more to put on muscle, and it worked, I put on a lot of muscle. Only problem is that I have military aspirations, so a high body fat level regardless of how much muscle I have is a bad thing for all the body weight excersizes they do plus running, and it is pretty demorilizing to be 10X stronger than most people yet still be "a fatty". Before that 4 months of weight lifting I was "chubby" i.e kinda fat, but not that much over weight and no health problems or anything, but with the extra 20 lbs or so (although most of it is muscle I'm assuming) my weight is what I would consider out of hand and I'm definitely in order for major fat loss.

So my question is: I know that weight lifting is another calorie burner, but being that running for a little longer will easily cover that difference anyway, is it really worth lifting weights during a fat loss period when your diet means that you aren't going to gain muscle, anyway?

I know it is probably going to help retain muscle, but with the weight I would be losing to get to a "healthy weight" is so large that I am likely going to lose most of the muscle I have gained these last 4 months anyhow, I think? 216lbs-154 would make me happy. I would rather go back to having skinny arms and non existent traps/shoulders but have no fat, and start building muscle again then I would spending years trying to manage both.
If anyone here with a similar experience or good knowledge could offer some advice I would really appreciate it.

If you got bored reading all that and skipped to this part, the summary is that with such dramatic weight loss goals (216-154 within this year) I am asking if there is even any point lifting weights to retain muscle.

always a reason to maintain strength.

if you're hacking calories...hack the volume in the weight room...spend more time with high intensity low rep stuff on the big movements.

I was expecting to be told the opposite
btw how much exercise per day on average is enough to guarantee such a large weight loss? I know my basic BMR, and could work out how many calories I would burn by doing running on one day, pushups/pullups/situps (which are army fitness requirements, so i need to practice them) on another day, but have no idea what amount of calories I eat because nothing I eat is out of a box, nor can I really afford to buy loads of healthy foods. So with my average diet: Only drinking low fat milk/water/OJ, breakfast is muesli type cereal in low fat milk, lunch is one or two of some kind of lean meat sandwich, and dinner is typically steak with vegetables. Would 20 mins running one day, plenty of pushups/pullups/situps on the other day be enough to lose two pounds per week, or would I need 120 mins doing shuttle runs with a brown bear on my back each day to lose that weight?... A little over the top but you get the idea?

its been proven that weight training before cardio improves you metabolism and keep it high for the rest of the day

Well how about you think about your future aspirations and goals and your goals for the near future and you use that to plan things?

Is it a good idea to do weight training while doing fatloss. Absolutely. But let's just change that to "strength training".

You may have doubts about it's importants but instead of getting into all of the physiological details of why look at your wants.

You want to lose the weight but you don't think it's necessary to strength training. Which means if you DO do strength training you're going to have a hard time planning it based on "just because I'm supposed to" unless you have a fatloss coach or something.

But you want to go into the military and you are concerned about the bodyweight exercises. It's not like they are going to have you do a gymnastics rings routine but what I would do is plan you strength training around improving those bodyweight things..pullups and pushups while losing the weight. And plan a basic strength maintainanence around that.

This way you have PERFORMANCE related goals for your strength and that will still serve the purpose of muscle retention, etc.

Now, just getting skinny with no strength training doesn't mean you'll be a pullup champion because you could actually lose most of your strength endurance.

Nothing jacks up my metabolism like:

1) sprints (HIIT)

2) Strength training with big compound lifts

Dont' think of these two things as the calories they burn at time. They have calorie burning effects for up to 48hrs or sometimes more.

IW