Weight training to lose weight?

I know, you don't hear that very often. It seems everyone is all about cardio, cardio and more cardio. Every weight loss article is about some new fad diet or walking, or some new, nifty "color run" or some such nonsense. When you read about weight lifting it's "bulk" and "steroids". It's pictures of swollen men with obscene amounts of muscle. Weightlifting is rarely mentioned in the "weight loss" conversation. It really should be. Though there is one caveat, you won't necessarily lose weight. In fact, you may gain some. This is one reason that the scale is a horrible thing to worry about. What you will lose is inches. You will lose flab. And you'll feel a lot better too. 

Harvard School of Public Health conducted a 12 year study on exercise and weight loss. Their findings are published in the journal Obesity. 10,500 healthy men aged 40 and over participated in the study from 1996 to 2008. They compared a 20 minute weight training workout to a moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise. They found that weight training garnered far better weight loss. This has much to do with the fact that weightlifting boosts your metabolic rate over the short term AND the long term. It causes something called excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, or EPOC. Much like the cooling of a motor after a long trip, your body also needs to cool. While is does it consumes oxygen. EPOC is the amount of oxygen required to restore your body to its normal, resting level of metabolic function (called homeostasis). It also explains how your body can continue to burn calories long after you've finished your workout.

In an extensive review of the research literature on EPOC, Bersheim and Bahr (2003) concluded that “studies in which similar estimated energy cost or similar exercising VO2 have been used to equate continuous aerobic exercise and intermittent resistance exercise, have indicated that resistance exercise produces a greater EPOC response.” For example, one study found that when aerobic cycling (40 minutes at 80 percent Max HR), circuit weight training (4 sets/8 exercises/15 reps at 50 percent 1-RM) and heavy resistance exercise (3 sets/8 exercises at 80-90 percent 1-RM to exhaustion) were compared, heavy resistance exercise produced the biggest EPOC.

So all that walking, running and other cardio is good for you, but if you're trying to lose fat, lift heavy things repeatedly. After a weightlifting session you will experience an increase in metabolic rate. That means you'll burn more calories faster. Weightlifting will help you maintain your total amount of lean muscle mass, creating a permanent increase in metabolism. Lean muscle mass requires the body to burn calories simply to maintain it. Fat just sits. Cardio training will only cause a short rise in metabolic rate for an hour or two after the session, taking away from the overall calorie-burning benefits compared with resistance training. Cardio is still a good thing and makes for a fabulous warm-up before lifting. It can take 10 minutes to be able to efficiently use aerobic metabolism to produce ATP (the fuel your body uses for muscular activity). necessary to sustain physical movement. Once you get pumped (or sweaty) the aerobic energy pathways provide most of the ATP you need.

One additional bonus to weightlifting is that it will change your body composition. Aerobic exercise with burn calories and help you drop weight, but it doesn't build much lean body mass. It will reveal what you already have, but not add much to it. And remember, it's the lean body mass that burns calories. Muscles. And it is possible to combine the two through the application of High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). You get the best of both worlds, and you ass kicked. HIIT is intervals of high-intensity exercise like running, or crunches, or light weight, high repetition lifting, followed by low intensity or complete rest. HIIT has been scientifically proven to burn weight faster than steady-state cardio. Weightlifting is, by itself, a form of HIIT. The only requirement is to keep the "rest period" between sets as short as possible. 

So, if you lift weights and keep the rest periods short, you're doing High-Intensity Interval Training. HIIT causes EPOC, EPOC continues to burn calories long after the session is over. It also changes your body composition, adding lean body mass. Lean body mass burns calories, while fat does not. You'll look better, feel better and burn fat faster. It's a good thing.

I have been working out 5 days a week now for two months. I start with 15 minutes of cardio and then about an hour of weights. I've lost 10 pounds from the scale, inches from my thighs, stomach, man boobs and turkey neck underarms. Yes, I've got a long, long way to go, but it's certainly made a difference. I've dieted, I've had surgery, I've changed what I eat, none of that had the same effects as lifting heaving things repeatedly. And I feel better. The positive influence it has had on my depression is rather amazing. Mentally I feel better than I have in years, even when I was medicated.