Lose Weight the Right Way With Strength Training

How can we lose and keep off extra body fat? Millions of diet books would have you believe that to do this you need to go on a diet.

A diet is a period of deprivation that is intended to control the amount of food you consume in the hope your body will use up its fat stores.

Is this what happens you may ask? Well for a while the body is fooled and will use some of its stored body fat while it tries to recover from the shock of the sudden reduced intake of fuel (food). Then it will screw down the rate the body burns this fuel which is called the metabolic rate as it perceives a threat of starvation.

This situation is the opposite of what really should be happening if you wish to reduce excess body fat stores. The key to permanent weight (fat) loss is to stimulate the hormones that tells your body's cells to increase the metabolism in other words to rev up your engine at the cellular level.

You want your body to be burning plenty of fuel or energy 24 hours per day 7 days per week, even when you are parked on the couch watching television or sleeping. This is the newer, better more scientific way of getting and staying lean, not by reducing food intake to the point you can barely function as your metabolism slows to a crawl.

Strength training exercise is the only exercise that will increase your metabolic rate permanently. The exercise has to be of sufficient intensity (degree of difficulty) for this to happen. The old fashioned way of long duration, slow, mind numbingly boring low intensity exercise such as walking is totally ineffective for weight loss. It is like patting it with a wet bus ticket.

A lot of the problem has been the amount of so called fitness experts popping up full of misleading information. We have everyone from dieticians to nutritionists to someone's aunty that doesn't remotely even understand the concept of strength training talking about controlling calories as if that is the only factor in successful weight loss.

They say calories in, calories out and if you have a calorie deficit you will lose weight and if you consume extra calories you will get fat. But this is only part of the picture. Sure, you need a calories deficit to lose weight, but exactly how does your body actually use calories?

It is your lean muscle mass, which sits underneath your body fat, that determines how fast or slow your metabolic rate is that burns calories 24/7. Contrary to what many people think, strength training is much more important to successful fat loss than aerobic exercise (walking, cycling etc).

The reason lies in the amount of calories that are burned when even you aren't exercising as opposed to aerobic activities that only rely on the amount of calories burned while you are exercising.

Depending on the intensity an aerobic workout will burn approximately 300 calories per hour. If the exercise is strenuous enough (which is unlikely in the beginning exerciser) the metabolic rate will be elevated temporarily up to a few hours afterward. Compare this to strength training which elevates this permanently.

The metabolic rate accounts for 60 to 75 percent of your daily calorie expenditure, so even a modest increase will help burn off more fat. So, the solution to dumping the excess body fat is to make sure your exercise program includes at least 60% strength training exercise to kick-start effortless and permanent weight loss.

Article Tags: Lose Weight, Strength Training, Metabolic Rate