The majority of people are not aware of the fact that training with weights has a tremendous effect on losing fat. The way they see it is that weight training is only for those who want to be stronger and get bigger muscles.
It’s a huge misconception and one of the biggest reasons why some many people simply cannot get rid of their excess fat tissue successfully.
That does not necessarily mean that weight training and increasing muscle mass is the only solution to getting rid of your fat, it is just one of a variety of solutions.
Losing fat and building muscle at the same time
If you are familiar with weight training you already know that it increases the amount of lean muscle mass, otherwise known as lean body mass.
Increasing your lean body mass, in turn, increases the metabolic rate which enables your body to burn a greater amount of calories. This also means that you will start burning more calories even when you are not working out, like when you are sleeping or simply resting.
Here’s a simple example: a person weighing 180 lbs and has 15 % body fat, would have a metabolic rate of 1880 calories per day. If that same person lowered their body fat to 8% but retained his body mass of 180 lbs, they would have a metabolic rate of 1986 calories per day. That amounts to approximately 100 calories increase without having to reduce your daily calorie intake or increase your exercise intensity.
A 100 calories increase may not seem that much at first but in the long-term, it all adds up. If we take into consideration that a pound of fat has 3500 calories in it, then one could burn a pound a fat monthly.
When you look at things from that perspective you can see that these 100 calories can make a big difference and the most important part is that you lose the fat without doing anything in particular. You could be sitting on your couch, watching TV and still burn extra calories.
It’s also one of the reasons why all sprinters have very low levels of body fat. They carry a large percentage of muscle mass, meaning their fat gets melted away a lot quicker and they don’t need to do long and boring aerobic exercises.
This means that having the right combination of a proper training regimen, aerobic component, and a diet plan, makes losing fat a lot easier.
