Can You REALLY Lose Weight Strength Training?
YES ! You can !
When we strength train we gain muscle. When we gain muscle we lose fat. Strength training, or weight training, increases your muscle mass. Muscle is metabolically active. What this means is that calories that we consume “feed” muscle enabling it to maintain its size and integrity. So if you increase your muscle mass, you will become more efficient at burning calories, thus, burning more calories.
Let’s look at an example. Joe weighs 200 pounds with a 20 percent measurement of body fat. That translates in Joe having 160 pounds of lean, fat free mass. Mike also weighs 200 pounds with a 15 percent measurement of fat mass. This equals 170 pounds of lean, fat free mass.
Since Mike has 10 pounds more of lean mass, it is estimated that Mike will burn 100 more calories per day than Joe (assuming all else is equal). 100 calories per day doesn’t sound like a lot, but in a year this would equate to approximately 36,500 calories or 10.5 pounds of fat.
Maintaining a healthy nutrition plan is integral to weight lose. There’s no news flash there. But you can accelerate that loss with a proper strength training program.