Weight training (lifting weights) is what a lot of guys seeking to lose excess body fat stay away from. The general belief is that it is only cardiovascular exercise that burns body fat and weight training is only important if you are looking to increase muscle mass.
But, the truth is that weight training is just as good as cardio exercise if you are interested in fat loss (check this journal for research on it) and when you don’t exclude it from your exercise program, you are in reality restricting your fat loss progress.
In a moment you would understand why weight training is important if you want to maximise your fat loss and you would also discover how to include it into your exercise sessions.
How Weight Training Helps You In Losing Body Fat
The actual weight training activity on its own only burns a fair amount of calories; this is around 400 calories every hour which is decent if you are consistent.
But, the major manner in which weight training helps you in losing body fat is because it increases your muscle mass. This is because the burns 6 calories a day to maintain 454 grams of muscles tissue. As for fat tissue, the body burns only 2 calories a day to maintain it.
In other words, muscle tissue is a lot more efficient at burning calories that fatty tissue. This means that if you increase your muscle mass by engaging in weight training, you would be giving your fat loss efforts a big boost as time go by.
4 Easy Ways To Include Weight Training In Your Life
Since you already know that engaging in weight training helps your fat loss efforts, then you need to ensure that are doing it frequently and see it as an important activity in your life.
It is not difficult to do this. All you need to do is follow the four easy steps that are listed below and you would be putting your body in fat burning mode because of your increased muscle mass.
1.) You Need Access To Weight Training Equipment
Prior to starting your weight training, you have to make sure that you have access to the right equipment (free weights or weight machine).
The normal way is to just sign up at a gym that would have both free weights (like: barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells) and weight machines on hand for you to make use of.
On the other hand if you don’t like the idea of going to a crowded gym and you have space in your house, you can buy a bench and free weights or your own weight machine so that you can train at home.
2.) Come Up With A Training Schedule
The moment you have where to train, the next thing to do is to sit down and come up with a training schedule that is realistic. It needs to take into cognisance your job and family demands.
Your weekly training schedule should include workouts that train these important areas: biceps, triceps, shoulders, chest, legs and core.
The training schedule depends a lot on your lifestyle. How much free time you have would influence it. I recommend you aim to set aside 2 – 4 hours to lift weights every week. Your sessions need to be between 30 minutes and 1 hour.
3.) Keep Track Of The Progress You Are Making
Once you have access to equipment and you have come up with a training schedule that is suited to your lifestyle, the next thing to do is to keep track of everything that you are doing.
Jot down the amount weights you are lifting, the number of repetitions and sets you are doing every week.
You could do it the old school way with a pad and pen or you can use the new school way by downloading an app on you smartphone that helps you to track your progress and saves it on your phone memory.
3.) Re-Evaluate Your Progress And Keep Improving
The final step of including weight training into your lifestyle is to re-evaluate your growth and make use of it as a way to become better.
Preferably, you need to be increasing the amount of weights you are using gradually or the number of repetitions you are doing for each workouts. By doing this you would become stronger, build more mass and burn off excess fat as a result.
Summing It Up
As you can see, you should include weight training in your fat loss program. I am sure by now you can see how important it is. Asides from helping your body burn more calories, weight training would also increase your strength and muscle mass.
If your exercise regime only consists of cardio, now is the time to include regular weight training sessions and enhance your fat loss efforts tremendously.