Should I do cardio before or after lifting weights?

The reason comes down to fuel. On Ep. 291, Maggie Topham explains that your muscles store glycogen, and a long cardio session burns through it. Lift after that and it feels horrible. You can't reach the intensity needed to stimulate muscle protein synthesis, so you don't build muscle, which is the whole point of lifting. Her line is blunt: don't run on the treadmill for 45 minutes and then try to lift.

Nikkiey tells the same story from her own experience. For years she fit strength training in after long cardio sessions, and by the time she touched a weight she was already depleted. Her body couldn't build muscle because it was still recovering from the cardio. She explains that without muscle your metabolism slows and you store more fat, which is why her results never matched her effort. When she made lifting the foundation, she spent a fraction of the time in the gym, and her hunger cues became more intuitive because her body wasn't scrambling to replace lost glycogen.

Either way, the order matters more than most women are told. If you've been doing cardio first and wondering why the strength work isn't changing your body, that's the plan working against you, not a lack of effort. And when time is short, Maggie's advice is simple: do your strength training, then take a family walk later in the day.