It's not about doing more or doing less

It's about doing what is appropriate. If some stimulus is showing a positive adaptation, it is logical to think that more of that stimulus will show an even greater positive adaptation. In reality that is rarely the case. In fact it can actually be counter productive.

Training stimulus creates stress on your body, your body responds to that stress and adapts in ways to allow your body to do that task without suffering stress. This means increasing strength, building stronger tissues, denser bones, greater cardiovascular and cardiopulmonary capacity, etc...

Stress also releases cortisol. Cortisol is good and bad, pretty much like all our hormones, in the right dose it is helpful, as it has a job to do, and in the correct dose it does it. Cortisol releases fat and sugar from stores in our liver to switch us on, give us a quick boost of fuel, giving us the means to overcome our stressor and survive. If you are over doing your training, and creating too much cortisol, you will be releasing too much from the liver and keeping your body high in insulin, storing fat, etc...

Cortisol will mess with sleep. Naturally speaking, you're supposed to be low in cortisol at night and high in the morning. That morning surge is supposed to perk you up out of bed and let you get started with your day. The lull at night lets you drift off to sleep. When you get too jacked up on cortisol you can't get to sleep at night, then you wake up and you're dragging ass so you pound coffee just to get by. Before you know it you're completely at odds with your cortisol and sleep cycle, which just stresses you out even more and keeps escalating the cycle.

This is when people see their mid sections getting/staying squishy, so they think "time to step it up and do more 'cardio'"... which creates even more stress, more cortisol, more squishyness in the middle, and even worse sleep patterns... And the cycle escalates until you simply give up.

So... What should I do about all this? First you need to set some solid training goals. A smart goal is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. (a topic for another day) "Getting in shape", "losing weight", "Getting stronger" are not smart goals. Once you have your smart goals we can devise a plan to achieve them. This plan will include the right stimulus to create the adaptations necessary to achieve the goal, and not wasting any on extra stuff that won't lead me to the goal and will just screw things up with extra stress.