If you're on a fat loss quest, you've probably heard of all the rage these days on lifting weights to lose weight, and more specifically to lose fat. Yes, lifting weights does work to help you lose weight. You can almost double your fat loss results if you start incorporating some weight training into your exercise program. And it can even be more fun once you get the hang of it.
Here in this 2-parts series, I'm going to explain the benefits of weight lifting to lose fat and how you can use it in your fat loss program for even greater fat loss results.
If you're struggling to lose weight, try lifting weights today. It may serve to be that "magic bullet" you're looking for. Lifting weights is basically overcoming a resistance or force and then moving that force over a short distance.
Just take a look at all the tennis players who are so slim and thin. You might not regard the sport of tennis as a form of weight lifting but the basic tennis swing does have weight lifting properties. The swing is a form of resistance as it requires the combination of speed and explosive strength by whipping the racket against the ball. The ball is the resistance and the distance it travels across the net results summation of explosive and speed strength.
Resistance doesn't have to be a dumbbell or barbell. As long as you're moving a heavy object (force) across a distance over a short time, you're generating tension in your muscles. The tennis player is generating muscular tension as a result of swinging his/her racket and slamming the ball to the other side. This tension is similar to the tension created with weight lifting. Hitting a tennis ball is a resistance activity. It's a strength activity. This resistance activity keeps them in top-looking shape.
And if you repeat that tension on and off over a long training cycle, you'll reap the benefits of general strength training. You see these tennis players with slim, toned figures and they're pretty much in-shape year round. This is one case study in favor of strength training. Then take a look at the lightweight classes (those under 160 lbs) of olympic weightlifters. They all have a six pack. They're all lean, slim, carrying very little fat on them. Yet, they hardly do any long distance cardio. Instead they spend most of their time in the gym, pounding the weights.
So why exactly does lifting weights help you lose more fat?
It's all in the direct manipulation of your metabolism. Weight lifting and strength training is basically metabolism management for fat loss. The short story is that lifting weights, when combined with higher intensity methods and training strategies, will speed your overall metabolism and help you burn more calories throughout the day, more so than regular boring cardio. You'll get to spend less time in the gym. And there's no more need for spending hours in the gym every day doing mindless long slow distance cardio at the stale treadmill, unless you enjoy that sort of activity.
Manipulating your metabolism is very important for losing weight. Think about how many calories you burn in a regular cardio workout done at moderate intensity for 40 minutes. You probably burn 500-600 calories in that one workout. And what about the other 23 hours and 20 minutes of your day? You want to keep your body burning calories at a high rate to create that energy deficit.
And that negative energy balance is crucial to lose fat. Weight lifting will "rev" and supercharge your basal metabolic rate to keep it burning more and more calories. The goal is to really maximize the amount of calories you're burning when you're not working out. This is the ultimate metabolic benefit.
Muscle is also preserved through weight lifting. Muscle is very energy "expensive" meaning it burns more calories. And it has to burn more calories every single minute to sustain itself. One pound of muscle in your body burns about 50 calories more calories than one pound of fat mass. Lifting weights will change your body composition and shift your body weight from being fat dominant to muscle dominant, and you'll burn more calories every single day as a result.
Again, this can be done with short weight lifting workouts lasting as short as 30 minutes, 3 times a week. You'll also have more energy without feeling drained.
And let's say you spend 5 hours in the gym every week only losing 2 lbs in the past 3 months. Weight lifting is so effective for changing your body composition/lose fat that I've convinced that by adding this component of training into your schedule, you can lose 2-4 more pounds consistently every month until you reach your desired weight loss goals.
I've seen people who've trained with weights lose as much as twice the amount of fat weight they're carrying just by training with weights for 20 minutes per workout, 3 workouts per week (3 days a week).
Weight lifting is that effective and should be a primary staple of everyone's exercise program, if the primary goal is to lose fat. You also get the added benefit of increased strength and better posture.
Girls with Muscles
And for you ladies out there, don't worry about building big muscles. The same things that make guys bigger will make girls smaller. Building muscle is extremely hard. If it was that easy, you'd see all the guys in the gym being 300 lbs of pure muscle. Look around the gym and you'd probably only see one or two decently muscular guys.
And girls don't have the sufficient male sex hormone, testosterone, so it's physically impossible to build a lot of muscle unless you take steroids and performance enhancement drugs or get muscle implants (yes they exist and are actually quite popular).
Benefits of Weight training for Fat Loss
- An increase in HGH and lactic acid production. This creates an oxygen debt to improve your aerobic and anaerobic strength endurance so you'll be able to work out longer and harder while feeling stronger. The gains are even better if you combine a high intensity interval conditioning approach to lifting weights. In part 2, you'll find out how you can do this.
- Increase in capillary density to the muscles
- Increase in metabolism as described above. Your metabolism increases and stays elevated for up to 48 hours after the workout. You'll burn more calories and fat even while doing nothing; resting, napping, sleeping, reading a book, etc.
- Stronger muscles, bones, and connective tissues. This is always a benefit. I mean, why wouldn't you not want to get stronger?
- Greater resistance to injury
- shorter workouts, efficient training using high intensity programming and circuits, you'll spend half the time in the gym than your regular cardio session, spending 45 minutes each day doing cardio on the treadmill and bike is not an efficient use of time for maximizing fat loss
And with strength training, you'll look like you actually work out. Your muscles will be toned and trimmed. You'll look fitter. Compare the physique of Richard Simmons to Denise Austin (for the ladies) or Paul Walker (for the guys). Who would you rather look like? By applying weight workouts, you accelerate your fat loss results in half time time.
Your Soccer Mom Neighbor
Take a look at your next door neighbor soccer mom who still hasn't lost that extra 15 lbs she carried from her last pregnancy a few years ago. She does cardio for an hour every day and wonders why she isn't losing any weight. I bet if she wrestled with the weights for a month, she'd be able to fit into her junior prom dress again.
This plays into the definition of insanity.
Insanity is doing things over and over again and expecting different results each time!
If something isn't working, why not change it? Why stick to doing cardio on the treadmill if you're not losing any weight? Weight lifting would be the answer.
You don't have to be a slave to the gym. Prioritize other activities in your schedule since these weight workouts can be completed in under 30 minutes. Nature gave us muscles for a reason. We're made to lift heavy stuff and objects, to handle tension in our day-to-day activities of hauling stuff.
Functional Fitness
Further, lifting weights is functional fitness. You'll work the entire body. It's a full body workout. Most cardio workouts will only work the lower body. But iwth weights you'll work the upper body as well...and an upper and lower body workout combined together is better for fat loss. If you're going to work out, why work only the legs and lower body. Why not work the entire body for greater results?
Now that you know the benefits of weight lifting for helping you lose more fat in a shorter amount of time, let's head to the second part where I'll show you how to put together a strength training program to reach your fat loss goals.
photo credits:
Bodoggirl
mmmou812ic
Bodoggirl
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