Ask The Expert: Fitness
The primary way to prevent the loss of
HOW WEIGHT LIFTING HELPS WOMEN
LOSE WEIGHT & Keep It Off!
W
by Jesse J. Leyva, Owner of Outlaw Fitcamp
muscle mass is exercise—particularly
weight lifting and strength training. Young adulthood or middle age is the ideal time to start preserving muscle mass, but it’s always a good time to start.
While losing weight, weight lifting helps you lose fat instead of muscle and bone When you’re losing weight, only about
60 to 75% of the weight you’re losing is
fat. The rest of it is, unfortunately, muscle, bone, and water. But if you add weight
eight lifting is much more important in helping women lose weight than many people realize. Although there are many benefits to weight lifting, in this article we’re going to focus on the benefits it gives women who are trying to lose weight.
lifting while losing weight, it increases the
We’ll explain why weight lifting is
to lose muscle. Adding weight lifting to
important for women’s physical wellbeing, why it’s so important as you age, how it
helps you stay lean and healthy, and how it increases weight loss. We believe that
weight lifting is a key component of every woman’s weight loss.
Losing muscle mass is one of the main
reasons women gain weight as they age Unless you do something to combat it,
most women naturally gain weight as they age. Everyone loses muscle mass as they
get older, beginning in their 30s. Since muscle burns calories so efficiently, this loss of muscle slows down your metabolism. And because women start out with less muscle mass than men, this slowed down metabolism causes weight gain more readily. The average female gains around 20 to 25 pounds of fat between the ages of 20 and 50. And unfortunately, it gets worse as you get older. After middle age, the average adult loses 3% of their muscle mass every year. But there’s something you can do!
fat lost to up to 85%.
In other words, when cardio is the only
part of your workout routine, you’re going your routine helps you gain muscle and lose more fat.
In one study at Tufts University, 10
overweight women were put on the same diet. Half of them lifted heavy
weights at the same time. At the end of the study, both groups had lost around
13 pounds. But while the diet-only group lost 9.2 pounds of fat, the group who
added weight lifting lost 14.6 pounds
of fat and gained 1.4 pounds of muscle.
This same 13-pound weight loss resulted in a much trimmer body for the weight lifting group.
The beauty of weight lifting is that as you lose fat and gain muscle, you typically
lose inches from your waistline even if you don’t see a change on the scale.
Muscle mass supports increased and long-lasting weight loss
Muscles are metabolically efficient and promote weight loss by burning more
calories—even at rest. When you increase muscle, you increase your metabolism.
The more muscle mass you have, the more fat-burning your body does. Even after
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40 | LANTANA LIVING | SEPTEMBER 2021
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