Can You Lose Weight By Lifting Weights?

By Steve Menzies


Weight training is often mistaken as a bodybuilding method rather than a fat loss method.

But body fat is indeed one of the first things to go into overdrive when weight training is used consistently and properly.

In fact, resistance training has been clinically proven across many scientific research studies to be highly effective for burning body fat - even more than cardiovascular exercise!

The specific type of resistance training referred to here is H.I.R.T., otherwise known as high intensity resistance training.

Usually, when somebody finds out that weights do indeed eliminate body fat they run to the gym with ideas of fitness classes and hundreds of reps. That's not the case. While these classes are weights based, the resistance levels used are so low that it effectively turns into a cardio session. H.I.R.T. is based around heavy lifting.

The muscle building process which is kick-started following a weights workout is known as hypertrophy. The key factor here is that a session based around hypertrophy will use carbohydrates as it's main fuel during the workout. Not fat.

Now, you could see that as a disadvantage if your main goal is fat loss - why wouldn't you want to burn fat as your primary fuel?

The whole process is known as E.P.O.C. or the after burn effect. By using carbs to fuel our hard gym work, the body then becomes very protective of our few remaining carb stores while we refuel after a workout. But it must burn something in order to help the body continue to function. That's when we switch to losing body fat!

By training so hard we use carbs as our primary fuel in the gym, we allow ourselves the luxury of using fat as our primary fuel for up to sixteen hours after we finish training! That's considerably more fat than we could burn if we stayed at a low intensity and used it as our primary fuel source while training.

But how do you actually do this style of training?



The reason most people believe weight lifting is purely for bodybuilding purposes is because most people follow a bodybuilding routine without realizing it. Take a look the next time you train. How many people are lifting a weight for eight to twelve reps? How many are sitting for one-to-two minutes resting after each set? The answer is too many. That's normal gym procedure for the masses.

If you are aiming for high intensity resistance training, however, that is not what you should be doing.

Try jamming a few exercises together into a circuit, keeping your rep range in the 10-20 range to allow all muscle fibers to be fully worked. By taking zero rest periods between each exercise you will get considerably more done in the gym in less time. You'll also force the body to utilize the monstrous fat burning procedure we explained above.

Studies confirm that not only is H.I.R.T. great for fat loss, it is even superior to aerobic cardio exercise. Given that this is by far the most popular training method in mainstream gyms today, there are a lot of people reading this article who will have just discovered valuable new training information. Have fun implementing it.




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