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How does weight training aid fat loss

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If done properly, strength training will maintain or/and increase your muscle mass.

The total amount of muscle you carry (lean body mass) is directly correlated with the amount of calories you “burn” and how lean you can ultimately become.

The four ways added muscle mass helps lose fat are:

1. Increasing the basal metabolic rate.

Adding muscle mass will increase your basal metabolic rate with about 10 extra calories consumed for 1 pound of newly gained muscle.

So, if you would manage to gain 10 pounds of muscle and would not change your eating habits and the total caloric intake, you would be adding 100 calories to the daily caloric deficit. That is an extra 700 calories burned every week. Since 3500 calories = 1 pound of fat, you should lose an estimated 1 pound of fat every 35 days, literally without trying. (Results vary because of the adaptive component of metabolism increase)

2. Extra energy expenditure to produce the added muscle mass.

In order to stimulate the body to develop the extra muscle mass, you must train with weights and that requires energy.

The calories needed to do the physical activities come from stored body fat and daily caloric intake.

When body fat is used for energy, body fat levels decrease and the total energy expenditure is increased. If some of the calories come from food much of the food intake is burned leaving “less net caloric intake” (it is like your caloric intake has been lowered).

Both situations (increased total energy expenditure and less net caloric intake) increase the daily caloric deficit, increasing weight loss.

3. Extra energy expenditure for post workout recovery.

Weight training puts stress on the muscle causing micro-tears in the muscle fibers.

Energy (calories) is required to mend the damaged fibers. Repairing the fibers takes an certain amount of time, during witch the metabolic rate stays elevated.

So, you are burning extra calories long after you finished the weight training session.

4. Changing glucose metabolism.

An oversimplified explanation of what happens is that adding muscle mass means that more glucose can be stored as glycogen, making it less likely to store glucose as body fat.

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Creator: trifm
Category: Strength Training
Posted: 1/29/2008

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