There are so many preconceptions surrounding weight training that it is easy to get confused and even discouraged. Well I am here to reveal the truth about weight training and why it is incredibly important to you. First, the overall advantages of weight training are many! With respect to fat loss and toning, weight training helps to turn your body into a fat burning furnace.

1) The more muscle you build, the higher your metabolism
One common feature of thin, lean, sculpted people is “metabolism”. Metabolism is your body’s ability to convert the foods you consume into energy for your body. Do you remember that thin friend you have who can eat anything and not gain a pound? Well your friend has a high Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). Your Basal Metabolic Rate is the rate at which your body burns calories while you’re doing nothing. This is the amount of calories you burn just by being alive; you need calories to carry out bodily processes such as digestion, respiration, circulation, etc. BMR accounts for approximately 60% of the calories burned for an average person. Muscle tissue burns three times more calories than fat so by increasing the amount of muscle in your body, you will be increasing the number of calories your burn even while you’re resting.
In a recent study, researchers found that regular weight training boosts basal metabolic rate by as much as 15 percent! Let’s translate those findings in terms of fat loss over a 6 month period: If your BMR is 1500 calories per day (i.e. your body burns 1500 calories a day regardless of exercise) and by weight training you increase your BMR by 15%, then your BMR would increase by 225 calories to 1725 per day. This is not including a change in diet or an increase in cardio activity.

2) Better changes in body shape:
Another advantage of weight training is its impact on changing the shape of your body. A lot of people spend their entire workout doing only cardio and this simply is not an effective way to sculpt your body. Sure you might lose some weight, but you won’t change the shape of your body. If you manage to lose ten pounds by doing only cardio, you will simply look like a smaller version of your old self. In other words, if you had a protruding tummy and saggy thighs, you would look exactly the same, just slightly smaller. However, weight training gives your arms and legs better shape and tone, your stomach and waistline reduce significantly, and your posture improves! Which would you prefer: losing ten pounds on the scale but look the same, or see only a 5-pound change but ‘LOOK’ like you lost 15 pounds?

3) More calories burned long term
I’m often asked if weight training is better than cardio or vice-versa and the simple answer is this:
If your cardio is intense, then you may burn more calories during that 45 minute session than you would weight training. However, when you stop doing that activity, your metabolism returns to normal after a few hours. When you weight train and build muscle, you continue to burn calories throughout the day, even while doing nothing. So the calorie burning effects of weight training are more permanent than cardio, but incorporating both types of exercise into your routine will turn you into a calorie burning machine!

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