Lifting weights to lose weights?

2

Replies

  • Espressocycle
    Espressocycle Posts: 2,245 Member
    Lifting weight burns calories. Developed muscles consume more energy than fat.
  • rageddemon
    rageddemon Posts: 4
    my advice...mix it up :)
  • KatLifter
    KatLifter Posts: 1,314 Member
    Wow! Thanks everyone! Great responses. Does anyone have a specific weight lifting workout that they follow and wouldn't mind sharing?

    Thanks again!

    Jamie Eason's Livefit is a great way to get started with lifting and clean eating, I am just starting week 3, and it's completely free
    http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/jamie-easons-livefit-introduction.html
  • Yogi_Carl
    Yogi_Carl Posts: 1,906 Member
    Surely - whether you are using bodyweight or weightlifting exercises for strength - it is not the increase in muscle mass that causes metabolism to increase. Especially eating in a deficit, you are unlikely to gain significant muscle tissue. Even eating a surplus, weightlifters and bodybuilders have to work far harder than most people would be prepared to in order to acheive the gains they seek.

    It is more to do with the calories burned during strength workouts and the increase in metabolic rate in the hours following, during tissue repair and a tiny amount of tissue growth; if any.

    I don't know, I don't claim to be an expert but that's my angle on it and I would welcome one of our more experienced strength work people to amend or commend this.

    What strength work does that cardio may not is to shape up the physique under the fat so you look good when you get there. The main calorie burn comes, not from muscle growth and it's metabolic demand, but on an increase in metabolism during repair and rest.

    Am I right?
  • ptjolsen
    ptjolsen Posts: 365 Member
    Yes, mix lifting and functional exercise, with cardio and diet and you will be most successful.
  • Punkin7411
    Punkin7411 Posts: 45 Member
    I can only tell you what is working for me. I started out doing the Turbo Fire/Chalean Ext hybrid which does not involve cardio. While I found my body getting smaller, the scales moved very, very little. At 200+ lbs, the scales needed to move. I know I paid too much attention to them, but my 55 yr old 5'4" body had no business carrying that weight and it mattered to me. I then changed to Turbo Jam cardio 5 days and incorporated 2 days of strength training from either Turbo Jam or Chalean Ext. And I'm using MFP to track everything I eat. It is working. My weigh-in tomorrow will likely be very close to 30 lbs lost. My average weekly loss is 1.6 - 2 lbs. Now I'm using Turbo Jam Fat Blaster and Turbo Fire and never do the same DVD two days in a row. What attracted me to Beachbody was the muscle confusion idea. I had a really hard time figuring out the daily calories to eat too with all the "high math" equations with BMR and all that so I had to play around with daily calorie intake too. My goal is 1300 if I don't exercise, which is only about one day every 1-1/2 weeks or so. On days I exercise I usually eat part of my calories back but there is no rocket science to it. If I'm hungry, I must eat but I'm trying to eat as clean as possible and reach for the healthy stuff. I guess I say all that to say you must find what works for you and what you will stick with.......for life. Best of luck.
  • mustgetmuscles1
    mustgetmuscles1 Posts: 3,346 Member
    My cut and paste advice.

    Losing fat anywhere on the body is more to do with a calorie deficit than any particular exercise. With that said the fat will burn off from wherever the body decides. You can not control this and it usually comes off in the reverse order it went on.

    To lose "weight" put your calories in a moderate deficit. Notice I said "weight". To make sure the majority of your weight loss comes from "body fat" you will need to do resistance training. Muscle is very expensive to maintain calorie wise. If you do not convince your body that the muscle is necessary it will get rid of it. This can look great on the scale but is terrible for body composition. This site is full of people who reach their weight loss goals and are not happy with the way their bodies look. This is usually do to excessive calorie deficit (from severe dieting or excessive cardio) and no resistance training (lifting relatively heavy weights). Strength training should be started as soon as possible. I recommend picking a premade program like Starting Strength, 5x5, New Rules For Lifting. Any will get you results for quite awhile.

    The amount of protein and fat has an effect on muscle retention and growth (if in a surplus)
    I like this video for setting up calorie goals and macros (protein, fats, carbs)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bakMu9ddQ5I

    Pick whatever diet you want to follow. Clean, dirty, vegan/veggie, Paleo, IIFYM, IF, 6 meals, 1 meal, whatever your preferences are as long as the basic minimums are met the rest wont make much of a difference.

    Is cardio necessary for fat loss? Nope. You can lose weight just with diet alone or diet with strength training combined to maximize fat loss.

    Should you do cardio anyways? Yep. Many benefits of doing cardio but I recommend high intensity cardio. 20-30 minutes as hard as you can go. Try HIIT training at first. Do that about 3 times per week. Spending hours on a treadmill will burn calories but is so inefficient that I think its a waste of time unless you are training for some kind of event.

    Read this and the attached study but do not lower your calories that low:
    http://fitnessblackbook.com/dieting_for_fat_loss/maintain-muscle-mass-on-800-calories-per-day/

    Watch this video to decide what kind of cardio you might want to do.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up5n86VGC3c
  • waldo56
    waldo56 Posts: 1,861 Member
    The main calorie burn comes, not from muscle growth and it's metabolic demand, but on an increase in metabolism during repair and rest.

    Am I right?

    Yes.

    But strength training burns a lot of calories outright while performing it as well. It is virtually impossible to actually measure so science has very little to say on the subject (however the chemical reaction that creates movement from calories is hideously inefficient when not an aerobic reaction; strength training is a gas guzzler).

    .........................................

    Just a personal theory of mine, backed up by my rather meticulous data, but it seems that calorie burn rate is roughly equivalent at any maximum output rate in a fixed time....

    1) Heavy compound strenght training, where you are working in the low rep area, and waiting sufficiently between sets to stay at peak performance (4-5 min)
    2) Circuit training, when you go exercise to exercise, higher rep sets, recovering between rounds (2-3 minutes to catch your breath)
    3) Moderate rep sets, where you wait 2 minutes or so between sets to be recovered enough to go again
    4) Sprinting, where you recover enough between each run to run at peak output
    5) Jogging, as fast as you can go and yet sustain over a longer period

    All burn almost exactly the same amount of calories. Some are constant movement, some have long breaks, the chemical reaction efficiency covers the difference; in each instance you are going as fast as you can possibly go while maintaining peak performance. Doing 30 minutes of any of them at peak output would seem to be expected to burn almost exactly the same number of calories, no matter which you do.

    Where you go even faster and performance declines (for example typical HIIT), your calorie burn rate would be even higher.
  • lasmit4477
    lasmit4477 Posts: 308 Member
    ok, here's the deal.

    Weight loss happens when you burn more cals than you consume... cals in vs cals out... the energy balance equation.

    So as long as your are burning more than you are consuming, you'll lose weight. You can do that with exercise or without. If you chose to incorporate exercise, it can be cardio or strength training. Cardio and strength training (i.e. heavy lifting) have different effects on the body, but they both burns cals and thus both help you get into the ever important calorie deficit.


    And because I'm too big of a jerk to let it slide, I HAVE to say this (yes, I know it's a matter of semantics, but it needs to be said)...

    All those people who say they lost weight lifting or running or kick boxing or whatever... WRONG. They lost weight by eating less cals than they burned. It wasn't the exercise that caused the weight loss, it was the deficit. This is an important distinction to make because people who don't want to exercise (or who can't exercise) CAN STILL LOSE WEIGHT through proper eating.

    .


    This^^^

    Also, when people say that they want to lose weight, they have a general idea of what they want to "look" like! Lifting heavy will help you achieve the body composition that you are probably after and will help you maintain your LBM.
  • thecapaccino
    thecapaccino Posts: 138
    bump
  • lkokot
    lkokot Posts: 80 Member
    I had great reults with it with as little as doing it 3 times a week. I used P90X instead of going to the gym tho.
  • Yogi_Carl
    Yogi_Carl Posts: 1,906 Member
    Thanks waldo56
  • cedarghost
    cedarghost Posts: 621 Member
    Lifting causes you lose weight differently than cardio. I don't do cardio. I lift heavy 3 days a week and eat at a slight deficit in order to minimize muscle loss as I burn fat. I have gained a bit of lbm (and hopefully muscle) as well doing this, but I think that is mainly because I haven't exercised in years and I am getting those "beginner's gains".
    But yeah, if you are trying to lose, the biggest advantage to lifting in my opinion is to minimize muscle loss.
  • Mummyadams
    Mummyadams Posts: 1,125 Member
    bump
  • curvykim78
    curvykim78 Posts: 799 Member
    I ran for 2 years before I started lifting weights. It has made a difference in my body shape as well...It's worth it!
  • Topsking2010
    Topsking2010 Posts: 2,245 Member
    Great post
  • HeidiMightyRawr
    HeidiMightyRawr Posts: 3,343 Member
    All you need to lose weight is a calorie deficit.

    I've never done traditional cardio. It helps, in that it creates a deficit, so you can have your food intake a bit higher, but it's not necessary.

    While cardio may burn more in that particular session, lifting weights burns extra calories in the 24hr period after lifting. This doesn't happen with cardio. Also, weight lifting helps change your body for the better in more ways than just weight loss. If 2 people both lost 30lbs, but 1 lost it through cardio and diet only, and the other lost through lifting and diet, the person lifting would have likely lost the most fat, and the least amount of muscle.
  • ladance_4
    ladance_4 Posts: 6 Member
    Good question. And if you have seen results, what are some examples of things that you do? How many sets, reps etc..... Thanks in advance:smile:
  • Kvanstrom
    Kvanstrom Posts: 11
    I usually do a 50/50 split, especially in the beginning of my weight loss journey. I do 30 minutes of interval training on the treadmill and/or elliptical and then 30 minutes of weight training. I also prefer to be a bit more muscular, it's more of a natural look for me, so this is why I try to incorporate weight training every day. I find that the cardio eliminates the extra fat, and when that is gone, I have muscle that is already there from my weight training.

    Killing two birds with one stone, I guess :)

    When I am at my goal weight, I think I will focus more on weight training. Maybe 15-20 minutes of cardio, and 30-40 minutes of weight training?
  • Flamenquero
    Flamenquero Posts: 132
    I have to lift to lose. Cardio alone doesn't do it for me.
  • jennaworksout
    jennaworksout Posts: 1,739 Member
    I was a cardio queen and my body shape was just not changing, yeah I was slim, but still squishy lol.....i recently started strength training, and in one month my body fat went from 19.1% to 17.6% , my boyfriend says he sees a change, I only just started but I am pretty sure this will change the shape of my body which I have been looking for, I still do cardio, but not nearly as much, one day a week i dedicate to cardio, one day rest, the other 5 20 -30 min cardio and 40 - 50 of weight training. Its not much but seems to be working
  • FullOfWin
    FullOfWin Posts: 1,414 Member
    I was a cardio queen and my body shape was just not changing, yeah I was slim, but still squishy lol.....i recently started strength training, and in one month my body fat went from 19.1% to 17.6% , my boyfriend says he sees a change, I only just started but I am pretty sure this will change the shape of my body which I have been looking for, I still do cardio, but not nearly as much, one day a week i dedicate to cardio, one day rest, the other 5 20 -30 min cardio and 40 - 50 of weight training. Its not much but seems to be working

    Not much? It is more than enough.
  • sc0418
    sc0418 Posts: 22 Member
    Bump
  • ECW202
    ECW202 Posts: 13 Member
    Do you belong to a gym? I found this program on Pinterest a few weeks ago, but I have not attempted it yet.
    http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/jamie-eason-livefit-trainer.html
  • svgarcia
    svgarcia Posts: 592 Member
    Bump to read later
  • MemphisKitten
    MemphisKitten Posts: 878 Member
    I've never lost much weight doing just cardio. Case and point: I did the 60 day Insanity challenge and didn't lose ANY weight! I did build a little muscle in my legs and my endurance improved. But after putting in that much effort doing cardio, I was SICK of cardio! Now I do mainly strength training and have gotten over my plateau. I'm losing at a steady rate again.
  • bacitracin
    bacitracin Posts: 921 Member
    Diet is best to lose body fat percentage. Lift (resistance training) to get strong. Cardio (fast twitch repetition) for endurance, stamina and tone.
  • Cjoseph03
    Cjoseph03 Posts: 107 Member
    For later! I'm very interested but need to run out the door for work! Bump!
  • ebailey710
    ebailey710 Posts: 271 Member
    Why do you always write a novel in response to posts? I get that you know your stuff, but damn.
  • ebailey710
    ebailey710 Posts: 271 Member
    I love lifting. Both my husband and my friend who is now a personal trainer tell me that the most effective way to burn fat is to mix cardio with lifting, and I like it. It makes cardio not suck so much, and make me look forward to working out.

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