Why Killing Yourself in the Gym Could Be Doing more Harm Than Good
Living with elevated cortisol levels can feel like a battle against your own body…
Real health and wellness wins
and how to achieve them yourself
There are over 1,260,000,000 Google search results for “how to lose weight.”
Woah.
Weight loss is one of the most commonly-cited reasons for exercising.
While nutrition is the dominant factor for determining whether a person loses fat, strength training is an ideal complement to diet for achieving fat loss.
In this article, we look at why strength training is essential to losing weight and keeping the weight off. Also, we look at other habits that help burn fat and help with fat loss maintenance. If these topics appeal to you, keep reading!
Jump to Topic:
Fat Loss vs. Weight Loss
Strength Training Exercises for Fat Loss
Diet & Other Things That Help With Fat Loss
If weight loss is your goal, you don’t actually want to just lose weight… you want to lose fat and only fat.
A goal of “weight loss” doesn’t distinguish between what type of tissue the person loses. Weight loss can include losing both fat and muscle.
Diet changes are the key to losing fat, but when exercise is not included weight loss is the result. Weight loss from dieting alone includes about 20-30% of the lost weight being lean tissue, with most of that being muscle.
In fact, in some cases, lean tissue loss can make up over 35% of weight loss!
What we really want is fat loss. We want to lose fat while maintaining or building muscle, which will also protect us from a large decrease in metabolism and a likelihood of regaining the weight.
How do we avoid weight loss and achieve fat loss? Let’s keep going…
Muscle tissue is more metabolically active than fat tissue. In other words, your body burns more calories to maintain muscle mass than it does to maintain fat mass.
When you engage in strength training, you are essentially tearing and damaging your muscle fibers. Your body then responds to this demand by rebuilding the muscle fibers, and in the process, increasing muscle mass.
So, the more muscle mass you have, the more calories you will burn, even at rest.
Insulin is a hormone that helps regulate blood sugar levels. When you have poor insulin sensitivity, your body has a harder time regulating blood sugar, which can lead to weight gain and increased fat storage.
One way to improve insulin sensitivity is through strength training. Strength training helps build muscle mass, which is important for glucose uptake and utilization. Muscle tissue is more insulin-sensitive than fat tissue, meaning that it requires less insulin to transport glucose into muscle cells.
By increasing muscle mass through strength training, your body becomes more efficient at using insulin to regulate blood sugar levels.
A few studies with participants who were categorized (by body mass index) as “obese” illustrate this:
Dozens of hours of cardio over months led to small weight losses for obese individuals. Using cardio as a weight loss tool is similar to using a spoon to dig a large hole. There are better options.
When combining cardio with calorie restriction, more weight loss is achieved, but the problem becomes that what people achieve is weight loss. People lose fat and muscle.
For example, a half-year study of people who dieted and jogged three times per week led to a loss of 2-4 lbs. of lean body mass (Hunter et al., 2008).
Strength training provides a better alternative for a complement to diet for achieving weight loss. When strength training during calorie restriction, people can maintain or even gain muscle while losing fat.
Strength training is more effective for minimizing the decrease in metabolism that occurs during weight loss, which makes regaining fat less likely (Hunter et al., 2008).
Strength training also requires a much smaller time commitment, compared to the cardio routines discussed in the studies above.
The best exercises for fat loss are compound movements, which just means the use of multiple muscle groups and joints in a single movement or exercise.
We can’t help but state that, the best exercises should also be:
Several specific strength training exercises are beneficial for fat loss, but we suggest focusing on a push and pull exercise for both the lower and upper body.
For example:
Leg Press or Barbell Squat (lower body push)
Leg Curl or Deadlift (lower body pull)
Chest Press Machine or Barbell Chest Press (upper body push)
Lat Pulldown or Pull ups (upper body pull)
While losing fat, eating a high-protein diet maintains muscle mass. Recommendations vary, ranging from recommending around 0.7-1.0 grams of protein per pound of body weight each day during calorie restriction.
NEAT stands for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, which refers to the energy expenditure that occurs during non-exercise activities such as walking, standing, fidgeting, and other daily activities. NEAT can play a role in weight loss by increasing your overall energy expenditure and helping you create a calorie deficit, which is necessary for fat loss.
Incorporating more NEAT into your daily routine can be an effective way to increase your daily calorie burn without having to engage in structured exercise. This can be achieved by taking the stairs instead of the elevator, parking further away from your destination and walking, standing while working, and other simple changes to increase your movement throughout the day.
While “weight loss” is the common verbiage, we actually want fat loss. Fat loss means we are losing what we don’t want (excess body fat) while keeping what we do want (muscle mass).
Restricting calories is the most effective method for achieving fat loss, but we shouldn’t rely on that alone.
When it comes to exercise, cardio is a very inefficient way to lose fat and doesn’t prevent the loss of muscle.
Strength training is a much more efficient complement and can help maintain or build muscle while fat is lost. The most important part of resistance training to lose fat might be to hustle between exercises, which aids the post-workout increase in metabolism.
A few other practices can help with maximizing fat loss while maintaining muscle: eating a high-protein diet, taking omega-3 and/or fiber supplements, reducing uninterrupted sitting time, and increasing your non-exercise related activities.
However, the key to effective fat loss is to restrict calories while regularly strength training.
To learn more about applying these strategies to your fitness goals, start by finding a studio near you today.
Living with elevated cortisol levels can feel like a battle against your own body…
Did you know, your gut is home to over 1,000 bacterial species…
Certified in group fitness, functional training, & Slow Motion Strength Training…