Lift to Lose Weight . Four or five times a week, she laced up her running shoes and ran five miles, nonstop. But the scale refused to budge. Figuring she wasn’t doing enough, Zwiefel, 4. Months of heroic effort, however, did little to reshape her body. Under the guidance of Jason Stella, NASM- PES, CES, head of training at Life Time Fitness in Chanhassen, Minn., Zwiefel took up a strength- building program. Instead of low- intensity, repetitive exercise sessions on treadmills and ellipticals, she began doing shorter, more intense workouts with weights that were never the same from one day to the next. Four months later, Zwiefel’s shoulders, arms and abs had the sculpted, athletic look she’d always wanted. Better yet, 1. 5 pounds had melted off, and her body fat percentage was 7. Friends started asking her how she’d pulled it off. In- the- know trainers like Stella, however, believe otherwise. Both their real- life experience and the latest fitness research suggest that low- to moderate- intensity aerobic exercise, while beneficial, is not the fastest route to leanness and overall health that many people believe it is. The real key to fat loss is high- intensity exercise, especially strength training — with real weights, real sweat and real effort. The real key to fat loss is high- intensity exercise, especially strength training — with real weights, real sweat and real effort. The results may have little to do with what the scale tells you. Your weight may go down, stay the same, or even go up a bit. Your shape, however, will change dramatically, says Stella. For many, it can be a meditative way to clear the mind, blow off stress and get in touch with nature. Weight Resistance Exercises For WomenFor others, it’s a challenging and invigorating competitive sport. But as a tool for getting leaner, aerobic exercise by itself is a mediocre strategy. Here’s the problem: To lose weight, you must burn more calories than you eat. Stay in a calorie- deprived state long enough, and your body begins to burn through its own tissues for fuel. The number on the scale goes down. You can make that number drop through aerobic exercise and calorie restriction. But what most bathroom scales won’t tell you is how much of the weight you lose is in the form of fat, and how much of it is muscle. And losing muscle mass can sabotage your weight- loss efforts. Muscle contraction is a primary engine of fat loss, explains Stella: The more muscle mass you have to contract, the more calories you can burn. In addition, strength- training workouts that take large muscle groups to a state of burn will increase the release of hormones that aid in reducing body fat. So anyone who wants to lose fat should make every effort to hang on to, and even gain, as much lean muscle mass as possible. The best way to do that is resistance training, which will help you hold on to your muscle tissue while you lose fat. You might even gain some muscle while you’re restricting your calories, as long as you’re getting enough protein. The Best Strength Training for Women. What you don't know: When you skip the weight room, you lose out on the ultimate flab melter. The best exercise to lose weight is: "the exercise you'll do," says Timothy Church, MD, MPH, PhD. What no study has shown yet is exactly how. This much is known: Aerobic activity burns fat while you’re exercising, but anaerobic (meaning without oxygen) activity burns fat in the minutes, hours and days following exercise, as your body recovers from your workout. Compare the energy costs of the two activities during a workout session, as many studies have done in the past, and aerobic activity appears to burn more fat, which may explain why many health and fitness professionals still recommend it. But if you add up the fat burned by the two activities during and after exercise — including what’s burned between sets during the workout itself — anaerobic activity comes out ahead. What Is Resistance Exercise? Free weight training is considered the most effective form. Best Exercise Lose Weight FastAerobic exercise may be best at burning fat, weight loss. However, resistance training. How can I get the best mix of. How to lose your gut in 10 days Weight loss Men's. The best exercises to help burn fat and lose weight. Try this 25-minute fat-burning workout that uses metabolic resistance training to. The Proven Way to Melt Fat. The weight you use. Resistance bands can be used for the same exercises that are done with free. You can also use the resistance band instead of weights or a pull up bar. Morris Beckham. Way ahead. Several factors contribute to this. An exerciser consumes additional oxygen in the hours and days following a strength- training session (a phenomenon known as excess post- exercise oxygen consumption, or EPOC), and that accounts for some of the difference. Simply put, you burn more calories and keep your metabolism elevated when you use more oxygen. The muscles of a strength- trained athlete also remain slightly contracted (meaning they’re still firing) for several hours after working out, which adds fuel to the metabolic furnace. And it’s likely that the fat- burning effect of an anaerobic workout is cumulative, so that with each successive set, you burn incrementally more fat, leading to a kind of fat- burning jackpot at the end of your workout. But, as with many questions in the relatively young field of exercise science, a complete answer remains elusive. This spike, combined with the large amounts of fat and calories burned by the activity itself, probably accounts for the remarkably high energy expenditure of these types of activity. Healthy Hormones. You can’t see all the benefits of strength training in the mirror, but you’ll definitely feel them. One reason: Regular, intense resistance training can have a dramatic effect on your endocrine (or hormonal) system, which manages energy, mood and other components of well- being. Regular, intense resistance training can have a dramatic effect on your endocrine (or hormonal) system, which manages energy, mood and other components of well- being. Hormones also regulate your body’s immediate and long- term responses to strength training, so they not only help you burn fat and build muscle directly after a workout, but they also make you a more efficient fat- burning, muscle- building machine, 2. Strength training affects dozens of hormones directly or indirectly, but here are a few of the key players: Before you even begin your strength- training session, your adrenal glands secrete epinephrine and norepinephrine, which aid in producing more force, blood flow, and the metabolism of sugar and fat. This helps explain why you might start to feel charged up as soon as you lace up your lifting shoes or stroll up to the front desk at the gym: Your adrenals are revving up. Heavy strength training stimulates your anabolic (tissue- building) growth hormone and testosterone. Growth hormone boosts your immune system, increases fat metabolism, and promotes growth in your muscles, tendons and ligaments. Testosterone — abundant in men but present in small amounts in women as well — supports muscle growth while boosting mood and energy. Strength training may thus be an effective, natural way to counteract the drop in testosterone (and resulting loss of muscle mass and energy) that tends to occur in men as they age. Peptide YY, a digestive hormone stimulated by anaerobic training, can also aid in fat loss by counteracting the effects of ghrelin, a “diet- sabotaging” hormone that can make you hungrier and more likely to store fat when you cut calories. Over time, strength training has been shown to lower insulin resistance, a condition associated with type 2 diabetes that limits your ability to access and burn fat cells. Your newly insulin- sensitive metabolism burns fat more efficiently. Different approaches to strength training, from high reps to low reps, heavy weights to light weights, and everything in between, all elicit slightly different responses from your endocrine system. This has led some zealous exercisers to “chase” different hormones with overly rigid workout programs or to seek out sketchy “hormone- boosting” supplements. But Jonathan Mike, Ph. D(c), USAW, CSCS, NSCA- CPT, an expert on the hormonal effects of exercise at the University of New Mexico, advises against such strategies. And that’s better than it sounds. The problem with many repetitive exercise programs is that they require progressively less energy the more you do them. That’s partly because repetition of any activity makes you more efficient: Your body gets better at performing that task. This is especially true if you’ve lost a significant amount of weight. Your body will naturally use less energy to move your new, lower weight. You’ll also expend less energy during low- to moderate- intensity exercise. This enhanced efficiency can be a major impediment if you’re trying to lose weight. The problem with many repetitive exercise programs is that they require progressively less energy the more you do them. That’s partly because repetition of any activity makes you more efficient: Your body gets better at performing that task. Your best bet, then, is to find ways to make your exercise program more inefficient. With aerobic exercise, you can mix it up: Alternate longer runs, rides or swims with some intermittent training — intervals in which you go hard for a short burst (3. But it’s even simpler with strength training: Slap some extra weight on the bar, or take some off. Do sets for time instead of stopping at a predetermined number of reps. Adjust your rest time between sets, do your exercises in a different order, or do different exercises altogether, and you have a new set of challenges to which your body has to adapt. Tweak your program regularly, and you can continue improving for as long as you keep up your strength- training efforts.“Changing things up guarantees inefficiency,” says Lou Schuler, CSCS, coauthor of The New Rules of Lifting for Life (Avery, 2. But Cosgrove believes that higher- intensity activities may actually burn large amounts of fat in part because they require so much focus and attention, and don’t allow you to simply go through the motions. After all, it’s pretty tough to zone out when you’re holding a loaded barbell over your head. But for now, they aren’t sweating the details — and neither should you. But we’re not wrong about the fact that it works.”. Andrew Heffernan is a Los Angeles–based fitness coach and a contributing editor at Experience Life. He blogs at www. malepatternfitness. Strength Training: The Workout You Need To Lose Weight. Mikolette / Getty Images. When you think about the best type of workouts for weight loss, your mind might not immediately jump to strength training, but it should. While it’s definitely true that cardio workouts get your heart working harder and as a result, help your body burn calories, strength training is what’s really going to give your weight- loss goals that extra boost. Before we really get into it, we want to make it clear that weight loss as a goal isn't necessarily for everyone. For anyone who has a history of disordered eating, even if you're in recovery, you should speak with a doctor before you pursue any weight- loss goal, including starting a new exercise routine. And even if you don't have a history of disordered eating, it's really important to have realistic expectations and make sure you're pursuing weight loss in a healthy way. Results can be incredibly difficult to come by, may take a very long time to achieve, and are also really hard to maintain. Also important to remember: Exercise is only part of the equation. You have to create a calorie deficit (burning more calories than you consume in a day) in order to lose weight, which requires not just working out, but also being cognizant about what you’re eating, making sure to eat quality calories and watch portion sizes. You need to get good sleep, regularly. You need to have lowered stress levels. You need to take care of your other bodily needs. With so many factors at play, it's no wonder weight loss is a very unique experience for every person. If weight loss is a goal of yours, incorporating strength training into your routine is key. Here’s the thing, while strength training may not give you the instant heart- pounding, sweat- dripping satisfaction of, say, Zumba or an indoor cycling class, in the long run, building lean muscle definitely works in favor of your weight- loss goals. The short version? Having more muscle means your body burns more calories at rest. The long version? Read on for more on why strength training is the best exercise for weight loss. Related: Here's Exactly What To Do If You Only Have 1. Minutes To Work Out. Strength training helps build lean muscle.“Aerobic exercise is actually the most effective in losing weight, however, it’s not the best at burning fat and increasing lean mass (muscle),” says Noam Tamir, C. S. C. S., founder of TS Fitness. When you’re losing weight strictly through cardio, it’s normal to lose muscle and fat. And if resistance training isn’t a part of your plan to counteract this, you could actually be slowing down your metabolism by losing lean muscle mass, rather than revving it up (which can lead to weight- loss plateaus). Strength training is better at much building muscle than a cardio- only routine, explains Michaela Devries- Aboud, Ph. D., an exercise physiologist at Mc. Master University. The way the muscle adapts is by increasing something called myofibrillar size (the contractile units of the muscle). Resistance training stimulates this growth, which leads to an increase in muscle mass over time. Having more muscle increases your everyday base metabolic rate, or BMR (AKA, how many calories your body would burn just to keep itself running if you did nothing but binge on Netflix all day). The more muscle you have the more calories you burn throughout the day. The more muscle you have, the more energy it takes for this process. So by building more muscle, you're stoking the fires of your metabolism. By increasing your BMR and burning more calories at rest, you're also increasing your calorie deficit, which is necessary for weight loss. If you're not losing as much weight as you think you should be, you're probably building muscle as you're losing fat, and that's a good thing! There are several things you can do maximize your burn, says Perkins: Move faster between exercises, don't rest between sets, move quickly during each set, increase your reps, and choose heavier weights (but don't go so heavy that you risk injury, of course). Also, as a result of an intense workout, your excess post- exercise oxygen consumption, or EPOC, will . Think of EPOC as a temporary boost to your metabolism.” This is known as the afterburn effect. Here's how to add strength training into your weight- loss plan. At the end of the day, you still have to burn more calories than you take in to lose weight, and even though building muscle can help keep that up long- term, it’s still important to chip away at calories on a day- to- day basis. It’s important to include both types of training in a successful weight- loss plan. In general, Tamir recommends strength training three to four times a week for 4. And doing exercises to strengthen your core can help you maintain form for biking, which can also help you burn more calories.
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