Weight loss plans for women

Weight Workouts To Lose Fat

You live a fit lifestyle year-round but sometimes we realize the occasional junk food begins to show its effects. Being the educated fitness diva, you know it's time to start dieting and cater your workout to achieve your goal.

Whether it's because the calorie burning advantages aren't recognized, we think weight training is to build muscle and not burn fat, we think we can't focus on lifting and losing fat at the same time, we don't know how to do an efficient weight training program, or whatever the reason. Somehow we tend to put the weights back on the rack when we want to focus on losing fat.

eight training burns fat.

Although there are many benefits of cardio for fat loss, this article covers the advantages of using various weight training programs to lose fat.

24/7 Metabolism Boost

First off, I'll repeat what you've probably heard many times: "Muscle burns fat". But what does that mean? Well, muscle doesn't exactly burn fat but more accurately muscle raises your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR).

Adipose tissue (i.e. fat) takes no energy to sit on your body, that's why once it's there it will stay there until you exert enough energy to start using it as your energy source. Skeletal muscle tissue is called "active tissue" because it requires energy to maintain itself. To just sit on your body, each pound of muscle on your body uses about 30-60 calories per day.

With the right diet and workout, every female is capable of putting on 5 pounds of muscle in a year. If we estimate that your metabolism would use 50 calories per day to sustain that muscle, this means you will burn 250 more calories every day (50 calories/day x 5 pounds). With a pound of fat requiring you to burn 3, 500 calories, you will lose 26 pounds in a year without spending an extra minute on cardio. ([250 calories/day x 365 days/yr]/3, 500 calories/pound of fat).

Now as ladies, sometimes we brush off this advice because we don't want to get "big" or "bulky." Our society is familiar with how much 5 pounds of fat is. We see how our bodies change when we gain or lose 5 pounds of fat. What is unfamiliar to us is what 5 pounds of muscle is. Muscle is much more dense than fat.

At most gyms the trainers have a replica of 5 pounds of fat and 5 pounds of muscle. I encourage you to ask a trainer that works there or the front desk person if you could take a look at it. You'll be surprised by the volume difference and you will see there is no need to worry about adding 5 pounds of muscle.

The Afterburn

That hour of cardio was great to burn that stored energy, but when you're done on the cardio machine you're done burning calories. Weight training, on the other hand, keeps your metabolism at an elevated energy use rate for about an hour after you're done. Another bonus to weight training!

Exercise science calls this afterburn effect Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC)1. This means that after weight training the body continues to need oxygen at a higher rate.2 But that's a topic for an article in itself.

Weight Workout #1: Hit It Heavy

Muscle tissue growth is only stimulated when pressure is applied to it. If you use light weights and do rep after rep, your muscle will never have the stress applied to it that it needs to respond too. This means that although you eat cleaner and are on a reduced-calorie diet, your muscles will not grow.