Women's Health Tips 101 - Weight Training And How It Helps You Lose Weight

Posted January 27, 2012 By Paige Thompson

The advent of middle age, or even old age, is a time when people normally get torpid and start putting on the pounds due to the lack of physical activity in their lives. You should start to weave some sort of exercise into your daily life.

You may refer to it as weight training, strength training or resistance training, but this is definitely one exercise you must consider. Weight training will not only help with losing weight but will also trim and tone your body. Even if you are a senior citizen, weight training could work for you, as some 70-year-old women have gone on these training programmes and improved their strength and overall health while losing the excess flab.

Many believe that weight training is the key element in keeping the pounds off – they may be right. Here is the difference between aerobic exercise and weight training – with the former, you merely burn fat while exercising, and with the latter, you keep burning fat even after you are done. The body is still burning fat for up to as much as twelve hours after finishing the exercise whilst it is building the muscles worked, so you can still be burning fat while you are resting. But as the popular expression goes – but wait, there is more.

Another thing to consider would be the calorie burning capacity of a muscular body compared to a fatty body – the former would use a voluminous amount of calories, so you may need to eat more to keep your weight healthy and your muscle intact. However, eating a lot to compensate for the additional muscle will not exactly give you the appearance of a female Olympic weightlifter or shot-putter, remember that your make-up is different from these, uh…athletic freaks, and the tendency would normally be better-toned, more elongated and well-defined muscles.

When you first start to weight train you might find that your weight will actually increase. This is because muscle is heavier than fat but as muscle is smaller so you should notice the body getting smaller even if the scales do not show an decrease in weight.

Consider the following additional benefits of weight training for women:

It helps to strengthen and increase the density of your bones because the act of the muscles pulling and flexing the bones helps to lay down more bone fibre.

Stronger muscles helps your body to be more steady and so helps to prevent falls.

This could also control the build-up of abdominal fat, especially if you lift weights twice a week or more frequently.

Last, but not the least, you would want to switch your routine every few weeks or so, to prevent your body from getting too acclimated to the previous regimen. Based on studies, the human body takes only about six weeks to familiarise itself to any given exercise routine, and when that does happen, such routine loses its pith and efficacy.

Most of all, have fun while weight training and you will be losing weight and toning your muscles in due time.

What is the best diet? Get the facts here.

Categories: Weight Loss Diets
Tags: Weight Loss Diets
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