When attempting to lose weight, cutting calories alone might not be enough to help you reach your goal. That's where exercise comes in. It burns calories, allowing you to reach the caloric deficit required for weight loss. Although all activity burns calories, some exercises may be more effective for weight loss than others. Choose a method that will make it easy to adhere to your program, and consult a doctor before attempting to lose weight.
Weight Training Benefits
Weight training is a unique form of exercise in that it can help you increase your weight as well as decrease it. While bodybuilders and many competitive athletes use bodybuilding to increase weight by building muscle mass, weight training can help you lose weight, too. A 160-pound person can burn 457 in one hour of weight training, the Bodybuilding website calculates; you will burn more calories if you are heavier. Weight training also helps build muscle, which burns more calories than fat --- a fact that further aids in weight loss.
Weight Training Drawbacks
Weight training can be beneficial, but there are also potential drawbacks. Because beginners typically have success gaining muscle, your weight may increase if you build more muscle weight than the weight of fat lost. Further, research published in January 2009 in the "American Journal of Physiology: Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology" found that weight training can reduce ghrelin, an appetite-inducing hormone, but does not affect peptide YY, which suppresses appetite. As a result, weight training may not reduce your appetite as much as other forms of exercise.
Running Benefits
Running can be highly effective for weight loss. Running burns many calories --- an hour of running at 8 miles per hour burns 986 calories per hour for an 160-lb. individual, MayoClinic.com calculates; heavier individuals will burn more calories. In addition, aerobic exercises such as running suppress ghrelin and stimulate peptide YY, which helps control your appetite. The combination of these two mechanisms can aid your weight-loss efforts.
Running Drawbacks
Running can help you lose weight, but if you are not accustomed to running or are very overweight, running can be difficult. While running at faster speeds can help you lose weight, slowing down does reduce the calorie burn significantly; running at 5 mph burns 400 fewer calories per hour for a 160-lb. person than running at 8 mph. Running also does not build as much muscle mass as weight training, so you won't receive the same metabolic boost. Running doesn't provide much resistance to your arms, so you may lose muscle along with fat due to the lack of stimulus.
References
- Bodybuilding: Calories Burned While Exercising
- MayoClinic.com; Metabolism and Weight Loss: How You Burn Calories; Oct. 6, 2009
- ExRx: Fat Loss & Weight Training Myths
- "American Journal of Physiology: Regulatory Integrative and Comparative Physiology"; Influence of Resistance and Aerobic Exercise on Hunger, Circulating Levels of Acylated Ghrelin, and Peptide YY in Healthy Males; D.R. Broom, et al.; January 2009
- MayoClinic.com; Exercise for Weight Loss: Calories Burned in 1 Hour; Dec. 1, 2009
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