Lift Weight to Lose Weight

Author: Tommy Leung | 10/06/2008 | Fat Loss, Fitness, Muscle Building

There is this false belief that cardio training is the best way to lose weight. Running on a treadmill or using an elliptical machine burns the most calories while you are using the machine. However, once you stop so will the calorie burn. You may burn a few hundred calories during the 20, 30, 40, or more minutes while you are on the machine and that is it. There are still 23 hours left in the day that you aren’t using to burn more calories–that is a lot of lost opportunity!

The best way to make sure your body is at an elevated state of calorie consumption is to lift weights. If you are one of those anti-weights people, you are going to want to disregard what I just said. A lot of people do. But, unless you can spend several hours a day doing a cardio activity, using it as your main means of weight loss is never going to work. There are so many more hours that aren’t being used! You need to use a better means: muscles.

Muscle requires energy–calories–in order to survive. Every pound of muscle will increase the amount of calories you burn on a daily basis by about 50 calories. However, that is not the sole reason why lifting weights makes losing weight more efficient. Your body will remain at an elevated state of calorie consumption up to 48 hours after a weight training session. So that means you will be burning more calories while you are sleeping, watching TV, at work, or just doing nothing.

Doing cardio will not provide this benefit.

If you are, for whatever reason, completely opposed to lifting weights, you can use sprints to create a similar effect. Using high intensity interval training will provide a similar form of elevated calorie consumption while at rest. Instead of running at a steady pace, you run at a slow to moderate pace with sprints mixed in between. A sprint is not just going faster than you were before but, going as fast as you can.

This form of cardio training does not burn as many calories for every minute you are doing the activity but, will burn more calories in the hours after you stop. It is also a lot more fun to do unless you enjoy monotonous work.

Sprinting will also help you put on some muscle–not as much as lifting weights. It’s benefits for weight loss are comparable to that of weight lifting but, weight lifting is still the better choice. If you fear getting big or muscular, you should really stop. If it was that easy, there would be a lot more bodybuilders walking around. Instead, two thirds of the US population is overweight. Putting on some muscle is the least of our worries.

So go lift weights! Saying you want to lose weight and then not using the best tools to do so is no better than doing nothing.

By Tommy Leung