Can weight training help you lose body fat? The answer is yes. Generally, people perceive cardio as the best way to lose fat and prefer it over weight training. Another general perception is that weight training is for building muscle and fine-tuning body shape. But it is not the way it is perceived. Weight training is more effective to lose fat, and in some ways, it is better than cardio.
We all know that our body needs energy to perform everyday activities and that energy comes from calories that we take in the form of food. Our body primarily uses two sources to get this energy and one of them is body fat. By doing exercise we make our body burn more calories which results in fat loss.
Cardio might seem to be the best option for fat loss since numbers in terms of calories burnt by cardio is more than that by weight training. According to Harvard Health, a person weighing at 155 pounds can expect to burn 372 calories after 30-minutes of cardio at a speed of 6 miles per hour, while a vigorous 30-minute strength-training session can burn 223 calories only.
However, a comparison of strength training and cardio based on just calories burnt can be misleading. By doing so you will miss out on all the other fat-loss benefits strength training can offer.
Following this misconception that cardio is the only way to lose weight is one of the common mistakes people make.
Short-Term Calorie Burn
Let’s try to figure out how weight training is more effective for fat loss. First of all, the fact that the more muscle you have, the higher your basal metabolic rate (BMR), which means your body burns more calories at rest. So your body will burn more calories after you complete your workout. A review by Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise confirms that your BMR eats up a whopping 60–75% of your total daily calorie burn.
Since weight-training can maintain or build your muscle mass, it will increase the number of calories your body burns at rest, which will help to shed more fat.
According to a study, metabolism can be boosted for up to 38 hours after a weight-training workout session [1]. This means that if you are resting after a weight training session, your body will burn, for example, 80 calories an hour instead of 60 calories it normally burns. That extra 20 calories may not seem to be of importance, but when you multiply this by 38 hours, you will realize how big a difference it can make. Further calculating it on a monthly rate, it becomes clear how regular weight-training will improve your capacity to burn calories, and thus fat.
Strength or weight training also helps to reduce the loss of muscle mass that usually occurs when people cut down calorie intake for weight loss. Since the loss of muscle mass and loss of fat are inter-linked, weight training helps to redeem muscle mass during the fat loss process. A 2018 review published in the journal “Nutrients” revealed that resistance training helps prevent almost 100% of muscle loss from caloric restriction while reducing fat mass to the same extent as caloric restriction alone.
Cardio training might provide you with some extra calories burned after a moderate cardio session depending on how intensive and how long the workout session is. To generate a high amount of calorie burn after cardio sessions, you’d have to be doing it for a very long duration of time.
As cardio usually involves running at a slower pace, sprinting can have a completely different impact. Sprinting affects your metabolic rate similar to that of weightlifting, so it can be considered as well for weight loss goals. But remember, to see the benefits of spiriting, you need to be doing it hard which is something most people struggle with.
Long-Term Calorie Burn
Long-term metabolic increases are the second factor you must consider while planning to achieve fat loss goals. It feels fascinating to be burning calories for 38 hours even after completing the workout; it actually won’t help unless you are consistent with your workout routine. Keeping yourself regular is the key here. Missing out on your daily weight-training program will land you nowhere.
Weight training enables you to build up a larger degree of lean muscle mass, which then serves as a calorie killing unit in the body.
Another factor which is important to calculate your basal metabolic rate is your total body weight. The best equation to calculate your basal metabolic rate would also consider your lean body mass which represents muscles, bones and organs. Weight–training puts a lot of stress on your muscle tissue which eventually wears out and then your body burns more calories to repair those tissues and hence helps in weight loss. So, the more muscle you have on your body, the higher rate of calories burnt will be. Since muscle tissue keeps getting stable during strength training; this proves to be an effective long-term strategy for losing body fat.
Males can typically eat more than females without gaining weight because they have more lean muscle mass on their body than females. Thus, they can burn more calories perpetually.
How much muscle mass can you put on and how quickly? You need to be critically realistic to this if you want to lose weight since there is a natural ceiling to gaining muscle mass over a specific period. Although there can be un-natural means of gaining extra muscle, naturally, males can build around 2 pounds of pure muscle in a given month and females can build about half of that. With consistent efforts in weight-training, you might get dramatically resistant to extra fat gain, making it extremely beneficial.
Another benefit you can get from weight-training is that it will allow you to completely reshape your body. Cardio can generally help lose weight but cannot shape your body the way most people expect. Weight-training combined with calorie-restricted diet is what will provide you with a brighter chance of reshaping yourself rather than just doing cardio for weight loss.
References: 1.Schuenke, M. D., Mikat, R. P., & McBride, J. M. (2002). Effect of an acute period of resistance exercise on excess post-exercise oxygen consumption: implications for body mass management. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 86(5),