Can anyone recommend the best type of exercise to tone following substantial
weight loss. Is running a good choice?

Running is an aerobic exercise that is efficient in increasing your
metabolism which stimulates greater caloric needs. As far as toning, you
should do some basic weight lifting exercises with low weight and high reps.
After a substantial weight loss, your muscles have had a lot taken out of
them, since it is very hard to lose fat without some muscle loss. Allow
yourself to return some muscle strength through weight training which will
help considerably in keeping the excess fat off.

1.) Running doesn’t do dick to increase your metabolism. You burn more
calories when you are actually in the act of running then you would if
you were sitting around, but your resting metabolism doesn’t increase.
See any well-run study on this topic in the last three years.

2.) Adding lean muscle by busting your ass on the weights is the only
way, short of drugs and drug-like supplements, to increase your resting
metabolism.

3.) Forget “low weight and high reps” for “toning”. Use good form to
make sure you develop the entire muscle, but use as heavy a weight as
you can handle for ~10 reps, and go to failure. If you have any kind of
decent genetics, you can add plenty of muscle over time without looking
bulky, if you use good form.

Any aerobic exercise will increase your metabolism while
your performing the exercise and for a few hours afterwards. It does not
increase your basal metabolic rate. But I never said that it did. Only
adding muscle will alter your BMR. I see that some people try to read
things into statements. I will try to be more specific next time.

This post (to me at least) is from a beginner. If you tell a newbie to bust
their butt and work to failure their first day, do you know what you get? A
person who never comes back to the gym. Then what good is that?

What do you call high reps? High reps to me is 10-15 reps. I’m not one who
supports the 50 rep, one set BS. Again, maybe I should be more specific.

Finally, just because my web site doesn’t meet your needs as an extremely
experienced weight lifter, doesn’t mean that it won’t help a beginner. I
have been subscribing to this NG for about 6 months and I believe most of
the posts come from those who are new to weight training. My web site and
my answers are geared for those people.

My clients (mostly teenagers from the Y and two local high schools) are not
looking to be professional body builders. As they start out, they don’t
need someone telling them to workout 6 times a week, work the muscles until
complete failure, take 23 different supplement pills, eat 8 times a day of
high protein and low fat, and don’t bother with any aerobic exercise. I
realize this is an exageration, but if they listened to all the advise the
experts are telling them, they would never step into a gym again.