Weight lifting doesn't burn fat

VeronicaA76

That's both true and false. Exercise burns calories, cardio & weights. Burning calories helps being calorie deficient.

Now, gaining muscle can help lose fat faster for a simple reason. Muscle requires some calories to exist. On average about 25-50 a day per pound. So as you build muscle, you require more calories to maintain. If you don't increase calories while building muscle, you will lose fat faster as you will be in a greater calorie deficit. But, you do need to fuel muscles as well, so you can't just not eat and keep your muscles mass.

crw9384

My suggestion would be to back down your calories. Eat lots of lean meats and vegetables. Cut sugar down to a minimum and change your work out routine. Always get in at least 30 minutes of cardio. Then spend another 30 minutes on strength training. I started out at 214 and my calorie budget was 1590. I normally eat around 1250 a day. And if I'm ever unsure about calories, I tend to overestimate them. My workout routine is basically alternating days with arms and legs. I use machines for my arms and lots of squats for leg day. Paired with cardio. I alternate between walking at a high incline mixed with a little running. Hope this helps.

Maxematics

BabyBear76 wrote: »

That's both true and false. Exercise burns calories, cardio & weights. Burning calories helps being calorie deficient.

Now, gaining muscle can help lose fat faster for a simple reason. Muscle requires some calories to exist. On average about 25-50 a day per pound. So as you build muscle, you require more calories to maintain. If you don't increase calories while building muscle, you will lose fat faster as you will be in a greater calorie deficit. But, you do need to fuel muscles as well, so you can't just not eat and keep your muscles mass.

I just want to state the 25 to 50 calories burned per pound of muscle is a myth. A pound of fat burns ~2 calories per day while a pound of muscle burns ~5 to 7.

4legsRbetterthan2

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4legsRbetterthan2

For those of you who would like to continue the discussion on calories burned walking vs. running please see this new thread:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10586233/calories-burned-running-vs-walking#latest

AnnPT77

singingflutelady wrote: »

keyaunadunham wrote: »

I'm surprised that this has been mentioned!! But remember muscle weighs more then fat!!! You may be very well loosing INCHES!! Don't think you're not burning fat because the scale isn't dropping

Why do so many people totally underestimate how difficult it is for women especially to gain muscle and believe that muscle just packs on? There is a comment like this in every why am I not losing weight thread even in the ones where the person isn't lifting at all. These myths need to die.

Why? Speculating, but I can think of a few possibilities.

One is simple wishful (hopeful) thinking . . . the same kind of thinking that makes people believe they certainly should be losing if they "eat clean", go to the gym every day, and cut out sugar.

Another is the cr*p that a bunch of blogs and internet fitness celebs talk about exercises that will "tone your arms" or "build your six-pack" in 14 days.

The other is that I suspect there are a few women who start out quite unfit, but actually do start some kind of semi-decent strength program (yay!), then see a pretty noticeable *strength* gain fairly fast (because their starting point allows for strength gain through neuromuscular adaptation), perhaps also see some modest but encouraging newbie muscle gains if the time scale is long enough, lose some weight so that they "look toned" by comparison, lose substantial inches for a variety of reasons, possibly get a bit of a pump or some such, and interpret this constellation of things as "gaining muscle while losing fat", possibly abetted in this by dipsy-doodle body fat percent numbers on home or gym scales.

I actually had pretty much that exact kind of argument in another thread a while back with an older woman (younger than me ) who insisted she'd gained substantial muscle in a steep deficit, and that the then-OP shouldn't let a meanie like me discourage her by saying 1/4 pound muscle gain weekly would be a good result for a woman under ideal conditions (including a calorie surplus), whereas a 1/4 pound fat loss weekly would be nearly unnoticeable.

Since NM changes can really benefit very unfit/inactive people rather quickly once they start doing more, I think one can even see this misperception among people
who've begun even more-modest activity programs.

It may be useful, in these discussions, to explicitly acknowledge that noticeable strength gains, and desirable appearance improvements, can be taking place, even when noticeable muscle-mass gain . . . can't.

AnnPT77

skodadog wrote: »

As mentioned by many above, the solution is probably a combination of further restricting the caloric intake and moving to something other than or in addition to Zumba. I wouldn't give up Zumba all together (presumably it's what you like and that is important in motivation). I would also not give up weight lifting, but try reducing the number of weight training days or time you spend weight training in half and with that time, add some other high intensity training (HIT) exercise using a timer. Even 15-20 minutes of HIT training on a cardio/spin bike or elliptical trainer can really make a difference in caloric output (daily and weekly totals). There are great YouTube videos that describe HIT.

It's unclear to me how new OP's workout routine is, but just to be safe, I want to say this: People who are new to working out should not be encouraged to do HIIT routines. It's important to have a reasonable base level of fitness before trying to go "all out" in this kind of routine.

Much of what's currently advertised as HIIT . . . isn't. So-called HIIT is, in most of these common cases, just the latest over-hyped fitness trend. Many workouts presented as HIIT are just interval workouts (you don't - can't - do HIIT for an hour at a time). There's nothing wrong with regular interval workouts, they just don't have that trendy cachet of "HIIT". The alleged afterburn (or revved up metabolism, EPOC, or whatever) from "HIIT" is seriously overstated.

People new to exercise, and pursuing calorie burn and general fitness, are well served by boring old steady-state cardio, or regular ol' intervals (such as walk/run), plus a well-constructed strength program. High intensity serves specific athletic training goals, and requires solid base fitness.

BootyEvolve

Danicandothis wrote: »

That's what my doctor told me. I went in for a wellness check. I workout. I eat reasonably well and I'm not losing weight. She told me to increase cardio and do less weight lifting. I think she wrong.

Some background: i'm 5'1, currently 230lbs. 40 years old. I work out 4-5 days a week 3-4 days of weight lifting. An hour per session. 3 cardio sessions (Zumba) per week. I eat 1800 calories a day. I measure everything.
My math has me at about a 4,000 calorie deficit per week.

What am I missing?

Lol that's ridiculous. Every article I found says weightlifting BOOSTS your metabolism and keeps it revd up longer than cardio does after your workout. BUT I recommend getting cardio 20 to 30 minutes in and doing resistance training (3×15 reps). Play around with how much your eating in calories and weigh everything. Itll take a while to figure out how much you actually need to fuel your body. Doctors aren't always right. DO some research and do what you feel is right for your body.

Christine_72

cwolfman13 wrote: »

Mr_Healthy_Habits wrote: »

I know the cico crowd is going to disagree, but don't eat anything after 6pm and spend your evenings walking outside...

It really does work, however they want to rationalize why...

I always wonder what people do who stop eating at 6 PM...I'm often still in the office at 6 PM...on a good day I might be home around 6:30. I haven't been home before 6 PM save for a Friday evening in like 12 years.

I eat dinner around 8:30 every night and have done so for years...I lost weight pretty easily and have no issues maintaining weight. Not eating after a certain time is just a method for controlling calories and that's it.

I've been in bed for nearly an hour at the time you eat dinner lol I could never, ever wait that late to eat, i'd be a ravenous hog by then and would no doubt end up overeating.

AnnPT77

Mr_Healthy_Habits wrote: »

I know the cico crowd is going to disagree, but don't eat anything after 6pm and spend your evenings walking outside...

It really does work, however they want to rationalize why...

Heh. It's 10:50PM here, and I'm just eating dinner now. Well, OK, 2nd dinner - still got lotsa calories left. Lost 50+ pounds just fine, now maintaining, doing all kinda crazy baby-feline like this.

Guess that works, too. But then, I am one of the "CICO crowd".

Mr_Healthy_Habits

I never said what I recommended was the only way, but again I will say that it does work...

Eating late, no matter how little I ate during the day, has always been the kiss of death for me...

I had lost about 180lbs before I started trying to seriously add muscle

murphymunstah

Lifting should be done between 3-5 days a week for no longer than two hours a week. I suggest some High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) once a week in replace of one of your lifting sessions and in addition to your current zumba classes. I have been doing HIIT once a week for a little while now and it has gotten me in much better shape. I can't do anything high impact so I do all of this on an elliptical or a bike if I'm in too much pain from tendonitis. I jog between 4.5-5mph for two minutes and then give it my all for 1:30 or 2minutes if I can, and continue alternating between 6-8 times or about a half hour.

LKArgh

AnnPT77 wrote: »

skodadog wrote: »

As mentioned by many above, the solution is probably a combination of further restricting the caloric intake and moving to something other than or in addition to Zumba. I wouldn't give up Zumba all together (presumably it's what you like and that is important in motivation). I would also not give up weight lifting, but try reducing the number of weight training days or time you spend weight training in half and with that time, add some other high intensity training (HIT) exercise using a timer. Even 15-20 minutes of HIT training on a cardio/spin bike or elliptical trainer can really make a difference in caloric output (daily and weekly totals). There are great YouTube videos that describe HIT.

It's unclear to me how new OP's workout routine is, but just to be safe, I want to say this: People who are new to working out should not be encouraged to do HIIT routines. It's important to have a reasonable base level of fitness before trying to go "all out" in this kind of routine.

Much of what's currently advertised as HIIT . . . isn't. So-called HIIT is, in most of these common cases, just the latest over-hyped fitness trend. Many workouts presented as HIIT are just interval workouts (you don't - can't - do HIIT for an hour at a time). There's nothing wrong with regular interval workouts, they just don't have that trendy cachet of "HIIT". The alleged afterburn (or revved up metabolism, EPOC, or whatever) from "HIIT" is seriously overstated.

People new to exercise, and pursuing calorie burn and general fitness, are well served by boring old steady-state cardio, or regular ol' intervals (such as walk/run), plus a well-constructed strength program. High intensity serves specific athletic training goals, and requires solid base fitness.

OP has a BMI of 43. I am trying to mentally picture anyone with that BMI doing HIIT for 20 seconds, and I just can't. I had attempted true HIIT a few years ago, when I was in awesome shape in a small group where most people were spending hours daily training, and most of them were participating regularly in triathlon races. Maybe 2-3 of us managed to pull off the entire 20 minutes without wanting to die afterwards. It was more a "I will show you what HIIT is really about, so you can see for yourselves why it has no place in normal people training" kind of educational experience )