Lift Weights, Lose Weight

Cardiovascular exercise is a great way to shed unwanted pounds or stay in shape, but cardiovascular exercise alone won’t get rid of body fat. Contrary to popular belief, fat loss isn’t about how many calories you burn while exercising or how many calories you deprive yourself of in order to be successful at the “burn more than you earn” method. Fat loss is about how your body burns calories long after your workout is over. Think about it. If all it took to lose weight was 1 hour of cardio exercise a day, America wouldn’t be the fattest country in the world. There are people all over the country working out 1-2 hours a day, every day, and they are still overweight.

So what’s the secret to long-term fat loss? Muscle. What a lot of people don’t realize is that, muscle burns fat and calories. In fact, muscle burns three times more calories than fat. By building muscle, weight training helps the body burn fat and calories long after exercise is over. The metabolism remains elevated for 16 hours following resistance training. The more muscle you earn the more calories and fat you’ll burn. It’s that simple.

Did you know that a person with muscle mass burns more calories doing the same tasks as someone without muscle mass? Did you also know that muscle weighs more than fat? Someone who may be out of shape and flabby can actually weigh less than someone who’s toned and in great shape! You can’t always measure your success by the scale. It’s all about body fat.

Studies suggest that after the age of thirty, the best thing you can do for your body is to get pumped. Fat gain and muscle loss are natural in your 30s. Unless you lift weights a few times a week, the body naturally loses almost a pound of muscle a year and replaces it with almost a pound of fat. The harder you weight train, the easier it will be to prevent the fat gain and muscle loss that comes with age. For example, if a 120 pound woman gains 4 pounds of lean muscle and drops 4 pounds of fat, she increases her caloric requirements by as much as 20% and can lose a pound of fat in as little as under a month with no additional exercise. One of the most important things to remember is this – weight training is a life long commitment. You have to continue to weight train in order to build and keep muscle mass.

Here are a few facts to consider:

� Muscle is a metabolically active tissue, much more so than fat. This means that muscle burns calories even when you are doing nothing.
âÂ?¢ Having more muscle means you can eat more (that doesn’t mean pig out) and still lose fat.
� The best way to gain muscle is through resistance training, e.g. weight lifting. This can be done 2 or 3 times per week for good results.
� Aerobic exercise such as jogging may result in some muscle gain but it is minimal when compared to resistance training.
âÂ?¢ Muscle is what gives your body shape. You can lose all the fat you want but if you don’t have any muscle to show then you won’t have any real shape to show.

To weight train successfully, keep the following tips (from fatlosstips.com) in mind:

� Keep your workouts under 75 minutes.
� Concentrate on compound exercises that work the large muscle groups.
� Use moderate to heavy weights with low reps, rest 2 minutes between each set.
� Do only 2 (maximum 3) exercises per body part.
� Train no more than 3 times per week, working each body part only once per week.
� Include some form of cardiovascular activity in your program. This will not only help to burn calories, but it will elevate your metabolism for hours afterwards
� Perform aerobic exercise 3-4 times per week
� Rest