Heavy weight lifting heavy weights? Yes or no?

A lot of women make the mistake of not lifting heavy weights when they want to lose fat. You may not lose as much weight, but you will burn more fat. Heavier weights equal bigger muscles, bigger muscles burn more fat even sitting around. You will only get as big as the food you eat and the amount of weight you lift allow. The more you eat and the bigger weights you lift, the bigger you will get. Women usually don't get that big anyway.

I have been lifting from the start. No cardio to speak of!

You should start lifting weights right away. If you are new to lifting, there is no need to lift heavy weights right away--you need to learn proper form and allow your body to adapt to the new routine.

As long as you are working to "failure" -- meaning you can't do another rep with good form -- you can do quite well with weights that you can lift 12-15 reps or even up to 20 reps. After 6-12 weeks, once you have mastered the basics and increased strength levels, there are benefits to moving to heavier weights.

You don't need to be concerned with "building muscle" at this point. Studies have shown that those combining weights+cardio+appropriate diet do better than cardio+diet groups even with no increase in lean mass.

Resistance exercise is one of your best tools for weight loss. It should be done from day 1 of a weight loss program.

I've been reading NROLFW and other fitness guides (not to mention various success stories on MFP) and I have heard so much about how good lifting weights is for you. However it seems that most of the other women who have had a lot of success with weight lifting have already lost a lot of weight and are now just getting buff. I have about 60-80 lbs to lose--should I hold off on the weights until I lose more, or should I start now? I'm just worried that lifting weights now (alongside the cardio and dieting I'm doing already) will just build muscle under the fat I'm already carrying. Is weight lifting only effective for women without a lot of weight to lose?

Thank you for any advice you can offer.

Lifting weights is KEY. I recently had my DXA scan done and at 51.5 years of age I have the bone density of a super athletic 30 year old. That is a direct result of lifting for over 30 years. Now if that is not scientific proof that lifting weights keeps you younger I don't know what is! Also I believe it is why most people think I look much younger than I really am.

Start lifting now, lift heavy and change it up often, find a lot of weight routines with free weights, make it fun, embrace it, make it part of your life. Only 3 days a week is all it would take. Crank up your tunes and learn to love it, because your body will love it and it will make your quality of life better in many ways, especially when you get older like me.

Because of this I don't have to worry about osteoporosis. If you wait until you are older and your bones start to deteriorate it's a bit too late, you can't get back what you lost, you can only start a resistance routine that will prevent further damage.

If you are a girl you don't have the hormones to get big naturally. I lift heavy and I'm still really tiny. My lean body mass is only 104 lbs and that is fairly heavy for a 5'1" female, and quite a bit of this is due to my having very dense bones from 30 years of lifting, not all muscle, and I'm still quite tiny.

My muscles really are not that big, but they show a lot of definition because I'm quite lean. If I gained some fat then I would have a softer more toned look (which is OKAY too!). Then if I gained more fat I would look bulking and hefty like I did most of my life until last year. YOU CAN HAVE WHATEVER YOU WANT. Lean and ripped, soft and toned, or hefty, it all depends on how much fat you leave on your body. Calories are the only thing that changes fat. Exercise is for changing or maintaining your lean body mass only. Lifting weights will give you the best bang for your buck for shaping your body. I finally changed my shape by putting lifting first and cardio 2nd. You cannot out exercise too many calories.

But you don't want to lift heavy all the time, you need to change it up constantly.

The workouts did for prior to this for years didn't do much for my shape. I realized this once I started my new routine. I now put weight lifting first and cardio second, but I still do cardio (mainly running). I change up everything all the time. My running is sometimes long easy runs, sometimes HIIT, sometimes shorter medium pace runs. My weight routine changes each day, each week, light circuits, heavy low rep sets, pyramids, a little bit of splits, constantly changing it up. I mostly do a lot of full body workouts with a lot of leg work. In addition to DL's and Squats I do Bulgarian Split Squats, Lunges, Reverse lunges, Curtsey lunges, Step Ups, Crossover Bench Step Ups, and a Lunge Matrix. And then I constantly change up the routine with Circuits, Intermittent Super Sets, Fibonacci Pyramids, X-sets, Progress Venus Pyramids, and some splits, everything a variety of Strength, Hypertrophy, and Endurance.

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Start YESTERDAY. Lifting weights will help you retain muscle and even build some muscle as you lose weight. As our weight goes down, our bodies tend to let go of muscle along with fat. Less muscle leads to slowed metabolic rate. You can only help yourself by taking care of your muscles on the journey.