STRENGTH TRAINING FOR WEIGHT LOSS



I hate when people use the word “Diet”. To me this means eventually you will go off the “Diet”. You need to change your eating and physical activity behaviors for good.

When someone tells me that they lost 12 pounds in two weeks, I think 12 pounds of what? Losing muscle is a bad thing. Muscle burns a lot of calories. Inactive adults can lose up to 1 pound of muscle a year. If they continue to eat the same...the extra calories (not being burned) will get stored as fat. A pound of fat takes up more room than a pound of muscle.

Muscle burns more calories than fat. Your metabolism is closely linked to the amount of muscle you you have. Adding muscle to your frame will greatly increase the chance the weight loss will be maintained.

Strength Training is more important to fat loss than aerobic exercise. The reason lies in the amount of calories that are burned when you are not exercising. Aerobic exercise will raise your  resting metabolic rate temporarily for an hour or so after. Compare that to strength training that will raise your resting metabolic rate permanently.

Don’t think that you have to spend 2 hours a day in a gym to strength train. Gains can be made with a 30 minute work out, 2-3 times per week. This could be the key to successful weight control.

Below is a picture of 5 pounds of muscle and 5 pounds of fat. Which would you rather have?




0 comments:

Post a Comment