Weight Lifting and Fat Loss
 

When fat loss and weight loss are mentioned, the first thing that comes on people's mind is probably cardio exercise. And while cardio does burn fat, people often seem to neglect, maybe the single most important factor for fat loss - weight lifting.

When trying to lose fat, people often start jogging, but neglect to improve their diet. Or in other cases they start weight training, but neglect cardio training and improving their diet.Well, weight loss is a combination of all three : weight lifting, cardio and diet. Neglect one of them and fat loss will slow down or possibly even stop.

Your metabolism plays a great role in the way you lose fat.It is defined as the rate at which your body burns calories when you are at rest, just to maintain the regular functions of your body. Typically, people use around 70% of their calories at their resting metabolic rate and can burn more calories if they participate in exercise or other physical activities.

The muscle tissue is where the most of the calories are burned.This means that the more muscle you carry around, the more calories are burned just to maintain this muscle tissue.And this is where weight lifting comes into play.By lifting heavy you increase your muscle size and automatically speed up your metabolism.

Of course you can lose weight just with diet or cardio, but (note that I said WEIGHT) some of that weight will be muscle and your metabolism will be slowed down. And guess what will happen when you start eating more calories again - you'll gain fat, because your metabolism is now slower and there is less muscle to maintain.

So if you want to lose fat, don't neglect weight training. Three to four short and intense lifting sessions is all you need.

-Lift heavy and use compound movements like squats, deadlifts, overhead press, bench press, pull ups and rows.
-Increase the weights you lift as you become stronger
-Change your workout routine every 7-8 weeks
-Give yourself a week off when you feel really tired.

Great post and advice for those needing to lose fat and gain or keep existing muscle ..........(like myself):(

That was good read Eazy, simple and to the point. I encourage you to write more such short articles. Great job!

I love the post but one thing I think it is missing is intensity I can lose weight and gain muscle with now weights at all other than my body weight. If you keep high intensity in your workout and change up constantly you will lose weight and at least build up some very lean muscle mass. Now for size obviously then you would want to make sure you keep with more with lifting more than anything. Also being in the weight loss industry I agree that diet, cardio, and weight lifting are def parts of the equation for that success.

Also many people forget you might lose the weight and thats great but what are you doing to insure you dont gain it back right away lol

Weight lifting is very effective for fat loss and i think bench press, squatting are good exercises for loosing weight and i also do it with push ups sometimes.

too long break ?