Weight Training for Fat Loss
In my years of training people, the biggest misconception I have seen is people thinking they need to do cardio to lose fat. Nothing frustrates me more than someone who tells me they will just do cardio for a month to lose fat and will then come train with me once they’re ready. Unfortunately, that’s not an effective way to lose your fat. If you want to burn more fat in less time (and keep some muscle!), you HAVE to incorporate some weight training in your program.
Here are the top 3 reasons why you need to do weight training for fat loss:
- More muscle raises the Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR)
- Weight training restores insulin sensitivity
- Weight training raises metabolic rate during recovery
The RMR is the amount of calories your body burns at rest doing nothing. When you have more muscle, your metabolic rate increases dramatically. In other words, your muscles make you burn more calories, which will result in a negative energy balance (if you control your food intake). Having some muscles is also important because it will ensure you keep a higher RMR as you start losing weight.
Studies have been done to show that weight training can help you restore your body’s ability to use insulin. When your body cells become insensitive to insulin, the blood sugar is not used properly which means that some of the food you eat gets stored as fat instead of going to the cells that need the energy. This will also lead to low energy levels (since your cells are not getting the nutrients they need) and increased inflammation (which causes accelerated aging and disease). When you do weight training or other forms of anaerobic training you can restore the sensitivity of your cells to insulin, which will lead to your body functioning better, burning more blood sugar for energy and burning more fat.
After your do an intense weight training workout, your body will burn energy at an accelerated rate for the next 24 hours (this is called EPOC- Excess Post Exercise Consumption). What happens here is your body requires more oxygen in order to recover and repair itself, so it has to elevate the metabolic rate in order to circulate more nutrients and oxygen.
As we mentioned previously in different articles, there are many factors to consider when trying to lose fat. Eat healthy, sleep well, drink enough water, but also, make sure you train hard and train smart! This means you should include some type of weight training in your program and not only do cardio. If you’d like to know more about programming your workouts (it’s not that simple) and making you achieve your goals faster, get in touch with us!
