Is Weight Training Good for Weight Loss?
Weight training – it may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of weight loss exercise, but it is never the less very effective for that purpose. The reason weight training doesn’t jump as the exercise to do to lose weight is because there are many exercise you can do, all of which would be referred to as weight training but not all of them are effective for burning fat. So people might be thinking of different things when they hear the term.
I remember reading a quote from some Chinese philosopher along the lines of: “People would solve half of their problems if they learned to call things the same name” and it couldn’t be more true in this case. For example someone doing bicep curls would most likely say that they are doing weight training, as would someone who’s trying to bench press an enormous amount, as will someone who’s doing circuit training with weights. Yet those exercise have a completely different purpose and produce different results.
So, what makes weight training good for weight loss, and what kind of exercise should one do if losing weight is the goal? Well, as I’ve mentioned several times throughout this blog cardio exercise have a limited usefulness time window during which they are very effective (read: Cardio Exercise – the good and the bad ) After your fitness gets to a certain level you will have to spend more and more time doing cardio to maintain results.
Now if you don’t want to spend half a day on a treadmill (and who does?) you have change something – you need to do exercise that are harder for you to do. One way to do this is to do exercise at high(er) intensity levels – like interval training. the other way is to use weight training. Also, weight training also accomplishes a side goal of looking muscular, so that’s nice as well.
In my next post I’ll touch on which weight training exercise are effective for weight loss, and which aren’t, so be sure to check it out!
