Strength Training For Weight Loss
Are you aware that strength training for weight loss is a crucial strategy and also assists in keeping the weight off? The workout doesn’t have to involve big heavy weights or a major program but simply some fundamental strength training.
The most common approach to weight loss is to go on a diet which reduces calories. This comes from the basic idea that by reducing calories weight loss will follow, and this has some truth. To reduce weight a deficiency in calorific intake is necessary but this is only half of the full picture.
Unfortunately the fat we have stored does not require calories it just sits there. Calories are required by our muscles sitting under the fat. Often people who are very heavy have a strong muscular system beneath the fat because this has been necessary to support all the weight that has been carried around. Daily activities of walking and shopping and climbing stairs have built up this strong muscular base and this can be used to your advantage.
The loss of muscle mass is to be avoided if at all possible, but it is very likely to happen if we use a starvation diet to lose fat. You will find that muscle mass will decline for the reason that there is no now need to hold up the bodyweight that it used to do. Also with the diet, there is now insufficient calorie to sustain those muscles. If you lose muscle mass then metabolism starts to slow down and any little surplus food will now be converted to fat which in counterproductive.
Strength training for weight loss is an ideal way to handle this problem. By utilising strength training for weight loss, not only do we lose fat, finish up with more muscle mass, but also the gains will be quicker. As the body fat is eliminated the muscles will begin to show through and will have greater definition.
Much body fat is stored outside the muscles, but it is also stored within the muscles which makes them look bigger when you are overweight. This intramuscular fat will be burned with a strength training for weight loss program which may reduce the overall size of the muscle but it will now look like lean muscle and it will continue to burn calories just during maintenance.
Losing muscle is way easier than gaining it back so any program needs to maintain the muscle that you already have. In fact the goal of most people is not to lose weight as such but to lose body fat, and this is what any program should be geared towards.
If you are to hold on to the muscle you have while losing weight then a strength training for weight loss program is essential. With a diet that severely restricts calories all that initially happens is that the body uses up the glycogen stores in the tissues and organs to get the energy needed to keep going. This in the main causes the loss of sugars and water from your body, this is not fat loss.
So just to reiterate, weight loss is not what we are after but body fat loss is. It is best to avoid the appeal of weighing ourselves as a measure of progress and to find better ways to estimate body fat.
Calipers are are a great option and should be purchased, they do not cost much and will help enormously. These measure the fat layer at specific, and repeatable points on the body. Charts are available that will pinpoint where these measurements can be taken. You will find that these locations are in different spots for men and women because fat is deposited differently in each.
In conclusion, a strength training for weight loss program will assist in the goal of reducing body fat while utilizing the muscles we already have to produce a lean body with enough muscle to burn the calories we take in each day.
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