Losing weight
For many women, losing weight is primarily about losing as much weight as possible. Those who don’t do sports often don’t lose fat tissue but primarily water and muscle mass. Strength training is therefore a healthy, effective way for women to lose weight.
Strength training helps you lose weight in two ways: Sport is also significantly better for the psyche and therefore for motivation instead of losing weight by not eating. In order to maintain motivation during weight training, it is ideal if women define and write down their training goals in advance. Once the first intermediate steps towards this goal have been reached, it provides additional motivation.
The check on the scales should not be too frequent, but only once a week at most. Many trainers also recommend that the scales be left completely unattended. Some women who have started weight training to lose weight are initially disappointed because the scales do not yet show less or sometimes even more.
However, this is not because the training does not work for them, but because not only fat is reduced, but muscles are also built up. This means that the difference between lost body mass (body fat) and gained body mass (muscles) is positive. In order to make the progress of the strength training visible, it is rather useful to determine the body fat.
With overweight women it will also take a little longer until the newly trained muscles become visible.Because only when body fat has been significantly reduced can arm muscles or abdominal muscles not only be felt but also recognized. Therefore applies particularly to strongly over-weight women: Hold out! Exercises for several large muscle groups are particularly suitable for losing weight, as these use up more energy than individual muscles in activity.
For beginners, two days of strength training per week with 20 minutes each is sufficient at the beginning. Each exercise should be performed in one or two sets of 12 repetitions. It is important that there is at least one day’s break between training sessions.
This is because the actual muscle building and fat burning only takes place during regeneration.
- Lower body fat percentage
- Losing weight on the thigh – How fast does it really go?
- During and also after training, calories are burned by the muscle activity (this is often even more than in a pure endurance training)
- The body’s basal metabolic rate (i.e. the amount of energy it consumes even in “standby” mode) increases because more muscles burn more calories even when at rest. This also makes it easier to maintain the new weight and there is less risk of the so-called yo-yo effect that occurs after many strict diets.
Strength training builds muscles.
Musculature is metabolically active tissue, i.e. our muscles consume energy. It does so constantly. So when we do sports, the person who has more muscle mass on an ergometer will use more energy for the same performance than someone who moves less muscle mass.
However, even at rest our muscles use more energy than, for example, fatty tissue. Strength training can therefore increase our basal metabolic rate – the amount of energy we consume at rest. We always lose weight when we consume more energy than we consume.
This goal is supported by the increased energy metabolism through muscle mass build-up in my strength training. During the training itself, not necessarily more, but rather less energy is consumed compared to endurance training. Strength training benefits from long-term energy consumption.
However, it should be noted: if you get on the bandwagon after a few weeks of consistent strength training to evaluate your success, you should not be frightened. Strength training is effective in burning fat, but it also builds muscle mass, which can be noticed as a small plus on the scale at the beginning. If you want to lose weight through endurance training, you will probably see more success on the scales, but you will also reduce your muscle mass to a minimum and will be more bound to regular and very intensive training in order to lose fat permanently.
Strength training is therefore an effective way for women to burn fat and lose weight, even if the results are not immediately obvious. In this context, it is also important to note that it is essential that enough high-quality protein is taken in through the diet so that during intensive training, it is not the body’s own protein, i.e. the hard-earned muscle mass, that is attacked but the fat deposits. Nutrition plays an important role, also in losing weight through weight training.
