Hitting a weight loss plateau can be frustrating. Many people can do well, initially, losing weight through diet and/or aerobic exercise. Eventually, the weight loss may stop despite continued efforts to lose weight, this is considered a weight-loss plateau. At this point, strength training may be the key component needed in your weight-loss program.
Strength Training
You can benefit from adding strength training to your routine to eliminate a weight loss plateau. Lifting weights is a productive alternative to cutting even more calories from your diet, or drastically increasing aerobic exercise. Strength training involves the use of weights, resistance bands or body weight and will increase your muscular strength, as well as increase lean muscle mass. Aside from strength training directly increasing weight loss, it can also completely change the look and feel of your body, making you feel more successful without even stepping on the scale.
Benefits
Reaching a plateau in weight loss, despite continued aerobic exercise and/or diet, generally means your metabolism has slowed down. Weight loss that occurs without strength training will result in lost muscle mass, and muscle is a key factor in an active metabolism. Adding strength training to your routine will decrease fat mass, minimize muscle loss and add muscle mass to your body, therefor increasing your metabolism. More muscle mass equals more calories burned; muscles burn more calories than fat, and greater calories burned equals weight loss. Additionally, the act of strength training can provide an increased metabolic rate for up to 12 hours post workout, resulting in greater caloric burn on the days you weight train.
Getting Started
If you are new to strength training, start slow. Plan to do a full body routine with focus on large muscle groups and basic exercises. The larger the muscle, the more calories burned in the workout, resulting in greater weight loss. Initially, adding weight lifting to your routine will, alone, promote weight loss as it will be a new challenge for your body. Progress your routine each week to promote continued weight loss.
Recommendations and What to Expect
As you get stronger, start to add exercises, sets, duration and number of days per week. If you have never strength trained before, or not in a long time, expect a few days of muscle soreness following your initial workouts and whenever you increase your intensity or try new exercises. Do not let this discourage you. Give it time to see results. You may not see your weight loss plateau go away for a month or two. Muscle tends to grow at a rate of 1 to 2 lbs. per month, so your metabolism will not increase significantly until you've gained more muscle mass. However, by the end of the first month you should notice you are stronger and feel firmer.
Considerations
Strength training can be extremely beneficial to weight loss, but too much can prevent weight loss because muscle is heavier than fat. You will be losing body fat, so even if the scale does not budge, if you are losing body fat and gaining muscle, you will notice that your clothes fit more loosely. Also, you can lose more body fat in a month, than you can gain muscle, so you should still be seeing a general decline in your weight. Modify your strength training routines if you feel you are putting on too much muscle mass, but do not stop all together. Consult a certified personal trainer if you need more assistance with an appropriate strength training routine.
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