Strength Training For Weight Loss 

Are you aware that strength training for weight loss is a crucial strategy and also assists in keeping the weight off? The workout doesn’t have to involve big heavy weights or a major program but simply some fundamental strength training. 

The most common approach to weight loss is to go on a diet which reduces calories. This comes from the basic idea that by reducing calories weight loss will follow, and this has some truth. You do need a calorie deficit to lose weight but the full story is a little more complicated. 

The fat layer on your body does not burn calories it is simply storage. It is the muscle mass beneath the fat layer that burns calories. Often people who are very heavy have a strong muscular system beneath the fat because this has been necessary to support all the weight that has been carried around. Daily activities of walking and shopping and climbing stairs have built up this strong muscular base and this can be used to your advantage. 

Strength Training For Weight Loss

The worst thing we want to do is lose the muscle mass while we are losing fat and this is the risk if we starve ourselves to lose body fat. The muscle mass reduces because it is no longer required to support all of that weight and it is no longer receiving the calories required to maintain it when you are on a diet. If you lose muscle mass then metabolism starts to slow down and any little surplus food will now be converted to fat which in counterproductive. 

Strength training for weight loss is an ideal way to handle this problem. By using strength training while also losing body fat, not only will you end up with a muscular outcome, but you will achieve the end result much faster. As the body fat is eliminated the muscles will begin to show through and will have greater definition. 

Much body fat is stored outside the muscles, but it is also stored within the muscles which makes them look bigger when you are overweight.  This intramuscular fat will be burned with a strength training for weight loss program which may reduce the overall size of the muscle but it will now look like lean muscle and it will continue to burn calories just during maintenance. 

Strength Training For Weight Loss

Losing muscle is way easier than gaining it back so any program needs to maintain the muscle that you already have. In fact the goal of most people is not to lose weight as such but to lose body fat, and this is what any program should be geared towards. 

If you are to hold on to the muscle you have while losing weight then a strength training for weight loss program is essential. With a diet that severely restricts calories all that initially happens is that the body uses up the glycogen stores in the tissues and organs to get the energy needed to keep going. This in the main causes the loss of sugars and water from your body, this is not fat loss. 

So just to reiterate, weight loss is not what we are after but body fat loss is. We need to get away from our fascination with the bathroom scales and look at objective ways to measure body fat instead.  

Not many people own a set of calipers but they are not expensive and this is a worthwhile investment. These measure the fat layer at specific, and repeatable points on the body. There are charts that will show the best places to take these measurements and they are different for men and women who typically store fat in different places on their body. 

In conclusion, a strength training for weight loss program will assist in the goal of reducing body fat while utilizing the muscles we already have to produce a lean body with enough muscle to burn the calories we take in each day.