Besides helping you to maintain muscle, lifting weights burns calories, during and after training, especially if you train with relatively heavy weights on basic compound exercises. A study published by the Democritus University of Thrace Department of Physical Education and Sports Science concluded that lifting heavy weights (80 to 85% of your 1 rep max) increased your post workout basal metabolism hundreds of calories for three days over lifting lighter weights that were less than 65% of subject’s one rep max. Another study showed that strength training and High Intensity Interval (HIIT) cardio training both had a greater afterburn effect than steady state cardio. The advice of lifting light weights for higher repetitions to achieve muscle definition to get cut is misguided. This study clearly demonstrates that lifting heavy weights that constitute your 6 to 8 repetition max is superior to lifting light weights that allow you perform to 15 repetitions, when your goal is to burn more calories. Don’t make the common mistake of underestimating the fat burning effects of strength training. Cardio isn’t the only form of exercise that burns fat. Intense weight training can burn calories, while building your metabolic engine. The bigger your metabolic engine, the more calories you will burn exercising or at rest.
Preserving and building muscle while dieting is crucial to a successful body transformation. Muscles are the furnace of your metabolism and are responsible for the sensual curves of the body. The more muscle mass you have, the more calories you will burn at rest, during your daily activities, and while exercising. The more muscle mass you carry, the more you can eat and still achieve a caloric deficit.
Muscles are responsible for all the sexy curves of the body. Building muscle will help you to lose unwanted body fat and keeps it off without having to spend time doing cardio every day. When you are dieting, your goal should be to burn more calories and maintain muscle. Any exercise burns calories, not just cardio, and strength training will ensure you end your diet with a leaner harder looking physique. Looking good isn’t a number on a scale, it is based on your body composition, your ratio of lean body mass to fat. If you don’t maintain lean body mass while dieting, your body composition will not improve and you will hit a fat loss plateau because your basal metabolic rate decreased as you lost muscle mass.
I would hope that the numerous stories of women losing weight and dropping dress sizes by lifting weights on programs, like CrossFit, would finally have dispelled the notion that lifting weights will make you look bulky. One pound of muscle takes up only 1/4th the volume of fat, so building muscle, will not add bulk while you’re losing fat; on the contrary, it will help slim you down by increasing your metabolism. Your physique will become leaner, stronger, and firmer. A great indicator that you’re losing body fat, even if the scale doesn’t move is your waistline. If you are tightening your belt an extra notch that is a great indicator of fat loss. Back in the 70s someone once told Arnold Schwarzenegger that his body was disgusting and they never wanted to look like him. He famously replied, “Don’t worry, you never will.” What he meant by that, is that you don’t get a physique like his by accident. It takes great genetics, years of hard training, eating seven meals a day, and the use of performance enhancement drugs to achieve such a massive physique. A great article for women to read on the virtues of prioritizing strength training is Why Strength Training Is the Workout You Need If You’re Trying to Lose Weight by SELF Magazine’s By Alexa Tucker.
Follow us on Facebook
Are you ready to reboot and reset your relationship with food and exercise? Most programs focus on the mechanics of weight loss, but fail to adequately address the psychology of change required. Most people know more than enough about nutrition and exercise to lose weight, but fail to take action. This book takes a new approach to getting leaner, fitter, and stronger.
The book contains:
- 7 Change Strategies for Adopting a Healthy Lifestyle
- A Flexible Diet Program that Doesn’t Put Any Foods Off-limit, including Alcohol
- 20-Week Workout Log with Progress Assessments (Downloadable PDF)
- 3 Strategies for Resetting your Body Weight Set point to Keep the Weight Off
- A Nutrition and Training Program Based on Science, not Bro Science.
The Fat Loss Habit: Creating Routines that Make Willpower and Fat Loss Automatic takes a new approach to getting leaner, fitter, and stronger. The program uses high-impact change strategies that make the process of adopting a healthy lifestyle easier. The nutrition and workout program, like the change techniques have all been proven effective, and are all backed by research and scientific studies.
Our BOOK The Fat Loss Habit is NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!!! We would greatly appreciate a brief REVIEW. Your feedback is our best marketing tool and it will help us to make a better product. Your review will help other people who want to make a positive change by helping them to find our book.
Follow us on Facebook
The Fat Loss Habit: Creating Routines that Make Willpower and Fat Loss Automatic takes a new approach to getting leaner, fitter, and stronger. The program uses high-impact change strategies that make the process of adopting a healthy lifestyle easier. The nutrition and workout program, like the change techniques have all been proven effective, and are all backed by research and scientific studies.