There are many myths and rumors about losing weight. One of them is, for example, the idea that you can only lose weight through endurance sports and grow through strength training. Therefore many humans practice only perseverance sport and do completely without a weight training, since they would like to decrease and not to increase thereby already again in the width.
However this view is not completely correct. Due to the high stimulus of a strength training, the muscles are stimulated to form new cells in order to form stronger and larger muscles. But this does not happen overnight.
Like all organs of our body, muscles need energy to grow. This large amount of energy comes from the food we eat every day. The formation of new muscle cells usually takes place during the training breaks, in which more energy is needed due to the new formation than during endurance training. If you start strength training and do not change your diet, the increased energy requirement during the training breaks will lead to the missing energy being drawn from the fat reserves, so that the muscles can still form new cells with higher energy requirements and the same amount of food. Here it becomes clear that the myth “Strength training only makes you broad and does not help you lose weight” is not true.
Positive effects
For a healthy weight loss, you should therefore never do without strength training. For men and women alike, a combination of strength training and endurance training is the healthiest and best way to lose weight. Strength training produces several beneficial effects that help you lose weight.
For one thing, strength training increases the energy requirement even after training, so that a slightly higher calorie consumption can still be observed during the recovery phase. Furthermore, in the long run, strength training has the advantage that more muscle mass also consumes more energy, thus increasing the body’s basal metabolic rate at rest. This phenomenon of an increased energy demand after strength training is called afterburning effect.
The afterburning effect describes an increased metabolic activity after training. The metabolism works at full speed during training and after the end of the training the metabolism does not immediately shut down completely. Also the oxygen uptake is still increased after a strength training and does not drop directly to the resting value.
Other influencing factors such as core body temperature and stress level also play a role. The stress hormones adrenalin and noradrenalin control metabolism, breathing and heart activity. The higher the training intensity, the higher the level of the stress hormones.
A hard workout thus produces a higher afterburning effect than a moderate workout. The increased energy requirement for the afterburning effect can be explained by the body’s regeneration mechanisms and the replenishment of energy stores. The breakdown and removal of metabolic products also costs the body energy.
This can account for up to 15% of the afterburning effect alone. In addition, the body needs energy to convert proteins into amino acids. Another influencing variable is muscle tension, which can be increased up to two days after a workout, and which also increases the calorie requirement, even if only minimally.
Which could also be of interest to you: Losing weight on the stomach, losing weight on the thigh – how fast does it really go? If you have trained an additional kilogram of muscle mass after a certain period of time, these extra muscles will consume 20 extra kilocalories (kCal) every day at complete rest. This means that the body consumes more energy because more muscle mass has to be supplied.
This increased energy requirement then has a direct effect on body fat. If you maintain your nutrition plan, but now need to supply more muscle mass, an energetic imbalance develops. The body needs more energy from the extra muscles than is provided by food.
The energy balance slips into the negative range. An example can illustrate this. A man takes in 3000 kCal per day and hardly moves at all, so his energy requirement is 2800 kCal.
The body consumes more calories than it can consume, the person gains weight. Strength training increases the basal metabolic rate and the increased muscle mass means that additional calories are consumed. The person’s energy requirement has increased from 2800 kCal to 3200 kCal.
However, 3000 kCal of energy is still absorbed through food. The body therefore uses 200 kCal more every day than it has available through food.In order to compensate for this missing 200 kCal, the body gets the missing energy from the fat stores created for “bad times”. The person slowly but steadily decreases. In addition, strength training improves well-being and can also be helpful in reducing stress. In order to lose weight really effectively through strength training, there are some hints and tips that should be considered.
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