Weight Lifting For Weight Loss and Muscle Gain

Weight lifting is perhaps best known for helping men to bulk up on muscle mass. Certain weight lifting strategies can help body builders to achieve truly impressive musculature. Other strategies are designed to strengthen muscles without making them bulky. In any case, women's muscles are not naturally designed to be bulky. They can grow and be strengthened considerably without noticeable bulking. Most women who lift weights gradually look leaner, but they do not become like body builders.

Muscles require a lot of energy from you in order to function and grow, and it is this energy-hungry tendency that makes gaining muscle mass a powerful weight loss tool. Assume, for a moment, that you do not do any weight lifting, and that you have a fairly stable amount of muscle mass throughout your body. Your muscles have a certain specific calorie requirement; you have to get a certain amount of calories from carbohydrates and fats to support your muscles' needs.

Now assume that you continue eating the same diet as before but you start lifting weights. Your muscles begin to grow, and as they do, they need more calories to support them. If you are still eating the same amount of calories as before, you will suddenly need more calories than you are actually consuming. What does your body do to provide your muscles with the calories that they need? At this point, your body turns to your fat stores and begins burning them up to provide calories to your muscles. That means that you are losing fat!

But before you get too excited at this idea, remember that muscle is much heavier than fat. When you first start gaining muscle, you might actually gain weight even though you are skinnier. As you keep burning up your fat stores, though, eventually, you should start to see weight loss. That's because you eventually start burning up your fat faster than you can gain muscle.

Weight lifting is most powerful as a weight loss tool when combined with aerobic activity. Aerobics strengthen the lungs and that all-important muscle, the heart. Also, aerobic activity burns up lots of calories in a short period of time, meaning that your body will have to dig into its fat stores sooner to provide your muscles with their energy needs.

Also, remember that your diet is another part of the weight loss equation. You must control the amount of carbohydrates and fats that you eat. If you eat too many calories, your body will not need to dig into its fat stores to fuel your muscles, and you won't burn fat. It's a simple concept.