While aerobic exercise can encourage your body to use stored fat for fuel, resistance training can also help to promote healthy weight loss. Weight lifting can help strengthen and tone your muscles, as well as increase the rate at which your body burns calories, both during and after your weight lifting sessions.
Weight Loss
In order to lose excess fat, your body must burn more calories than you consume. While dieting can create this calorie deficit, exercise can enhance weight loss while increasing strength and stamina. Combining diet with exercise can provide quicker results than just diet alone, especially when the exercise helps build new muscle fibers.
Weight Lifting
Weight lifting is a type of resistance training that challenges your muscles to lay down more tissue. Muscle tissue burns more calories than fat tissues, increasing the amount of calories your body burns while at rest, according to the Weight-control Information Network. The intensity of your workout and the size of your body play a major role in the amount of calories you burn while lifting weights. For instance, a 160 lb. individual can expect to burn approximately 219 lbs. an hour during a weightlifting session.
Methods
A variety of strength training methods provides an opportunity for building more muscle tissue. While health clubs and gyms supply expensive resistance machines that focus on strengthening certain muscle groups, resistance training requires little more than the weight of your own body. Push-ups, sit-ups, squats, lunges and abdominal crunches all use your body weight to increase your muscle mass. Free weights, such as dumbbells, barbells and kettle balls, also provide simple, inexpensive tools for creating new muscle fibers.
Precaution
While weight lifting can help you lose fat and maintain a healthy weight, this type of exercise can also lead to muscle and joint injuries, situations that may restrict your ability to exercise for weight loss. As with any new exercise program, it is important to check with your doctor first, especially if you have a health condition or previous injury. A lifting coach or personal trainer can instruct you on the safe and effective methods of weightlifting, using both resistance machines and free weights. MayoClinic.com recommends warming up with about 10 minutes of aerobic activity, then lifting just enough weight to tire your muscles by about the 12th repetition. A day of rest in between working specific muscle groups can give your muscles time to rest and recover.
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