How To Lose Belly Fat blog feature image

Lose Belly Fat Now! Value of Weight Lifting for Women

A Brief Intro

Weight lifting provides numerous benefits, especially for women. Over the years there has been a misconception that women who weight lift look “bulky” and “too muscular”, however that is just not what the evidence shows. 

Weight lifting has been proven to have more positive effects on fat loss and improving functional fitness than cardio and other exercise disciplines.

Benefits of Weight Lifting for Women

  • Increases muscular strength
  • Increases muscular endurance 
  • Reduced risk of injury
  • Improved functional fitness
  • Improved range of motion
  • Fat loss
  • Slows and reduces bone loss
  • Improves mood
  • Reduces stress
  • Reduces risk of chronic illness

Weight Lifting & Fat Loss

We often hear how great cardio is for fat loss, but what about weight lifting?

Weight lifting not only helps you to burn calories during your workouts, but it allows you to keep burning calories throughout the day. This is because weight lifting has been proven to effectively increase your BMR (base metabolic rate). There was a study done in 2018 testing the Effects Of Functional Resistance Training On Sedentary Women.

Along with increasing your BMR, weight lifting also builds muscle. Building muscle is essential, especially for women. It’s important for men as well, however far too often women are told to shy away from weight lifting. This is a shame because it is highly beneficial to our overall health and longevity.

Muscle requires more energy to keep than fat. I don’t mean that in a symbolic way either. Muscle burns more calories than fat, therefore the more muscle you have the more calories you will burn.

Different exercises burn calories at different rates. If you ever wanted to know how many calories your exercise is actually burning check out this great Calorie Burn Rate Calculator.

Sources:

https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2051&context=ijes

https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=41&ContentID=CalorieBurnCalc