Naturally, when the majority of people think about losing weight, the one thing that seems to come up more often than not is how much cardio they are doing and the intensity that they are doing it at. While cardio is a factor in trying to lose weight and actually make it fat loss instead of water weight loss, cardio actually only targets about 1/3 of the fat cells in your body. Well now if cardio only targets a smaller portion of losing weight, then where does the other 2/3 lie? With many previous clients that I have had, that answer is a proper diet when in all actuality it is weight training! The fractions that we are looking at as of now actually only look at physical activity and do not take into account nutrition yet. Have you ever heard of the 80-20 percent relation when it comes to overall health and wellness? Nutrition is 80% of the battle, and some can argue down to about 70%, but the other 20-30% is the actual workouts that you are doing, so the fractions up to this point actually just related to your workouts and not your nutrition, that will be for a later post.
So, we now know that two-thirds of our fat loss potential actually lies in lifting weights, so what do I mean when I say that? This basically means that a lot of your workouts should have some type of resistance and weight component with it in order to lose the fat weight. Why is that though, how can building muscle actually help me lose weight? Best explained, training with weights will actually not only burn calories while you are lifting but then also up to 36 hours after your last workout. If you lift 2-3 times a week, which is recommended by websites like Healthline, Shape, and Livestrong along with fitness professionals, you could theoretically be a fat-burning furnace at all times!
Another factor that will greatly increase with weight training is your metabolism, or your body's ability to burn the calories that you consume. So, as your metabolism goes up from weight training then your body's ability to burn the calories increases and you start to lose weight at the same amount of calories that you are eating. To better understand, look at the graphic below where we look at two people that are the same height and weight.
As you can see, both of them are the same height and weight, but one is leaner than the other. What this means is that the one on the right as more muscle on his frame, meaning a faster metabolism to burn off calories other than the man on the left.
Now that we have a better understanding of weight training and how is it beneficial, what are some things that we can do when we come into the gym to start this whole process of losing weight and increasing our metabolism? This question and many others that relate to weight training will all be answered in our next blog post on Monday, so make sure you stay tuned! Until then, feel free to check out our Facebook and Instagram pages, both Blades Fitness and Performance, and see some of the other awesome things that we are doing! Finally, if you like this information and think it is great, but are just unsure of where to start or you know where to start but you don't want to have to worry about all the planning, sign up with us and we will take all the guesswork out of it! Personal training with us offers more than just workouts though, as we dive into dietary habits and make behavioral changes along with providing a support system throughout your fitness journey! If this interests you, then sign up today and let's get started!