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Why weight loss requires strength training, even in women and seniors

Posted By: Mike Adams, The Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor on 03/04/2011 on 03/23/2011

Did you know that strength training is crucial for successfully losing weight and keeping it off? I'm talking about weight-bearing exercise. It doesn't have to be a huge, hulking workout where you're trying to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime, it just has to be some basic strength training.

Why is strength training important for losing weight? Because a lot of people try to starve themselves into weight loss. They think it's all about controlling calories. Calories in, calories out. If you have a calorie deficit, you're going to lose weight, if you consume extra calories, you'll gain body fat. While that's true, it's only part of the picture. Sure, you need a calorie deficit to lose weight, but how does your body actually use calories? It's your lean body mass, that muscle mass underneath your body fat, that burns calories 24/7, allowing you to actually eat more calories without gaining weight.

If you manage to keep all of that muscle mass and bone density in place while you are losing body fat, then you can maintain the high metabolism that's associated with that lean body mass even while you are dropping body fat.

But if you starve yourself, you're going to lose all the muscle resources you already have. It's a mistake a lot of people make. They try to lose body fat by starving themselves, and as the body fat vanishes from their body, their muscle mass also disappears.

You see, the body is an adaptive system. It will adapt to whatever loads you place on it. So if you are a heavier person and you're carrying around body fat, then your body will adapt by creating stronger muscles to lift your body. It's almost like doing a leg press every time you get up out of the chair. If you weigh 300 lbs you're doing a 300 lb leg press, you see? Now if you were to drop 150 lbs of body fat and end up at 150 lbs, your body wouldn't need the same amount of leg muscle to lift you. It would eliminate those leg muscles through catabolic action. complex.”

While it eliminates this muscle mass, your metabolism begins to slow. Remember, it's the lean body mass that's burning calories day in and day out, even when you're doing nothing. If you reduce that muscle mass by allowing it to go away (by not challenging your muscles), then your metabolism is going to slow. A lot of people end up at a place where they've lost the body fat and they're lighter, but it's suddenly so much easier to put on body fat. They don't have the muscle mass they once did, they're not automatically burning  calories, and if they overeat just a little bit, they'll start packing on the body fat again.

The solution to all of this, the strategy I want to focus on here, is to engage in strength training while you are losing body fat. If you do this, then you will be able to maintain the muscle mass that you already have underneath your body fat while you are in the process of losing the fat. This will leave you with a greater proportion of lean body mass to body fat, meaning that you will be slimmer, yet you'll have the muscles that you had when you were overweight.

If you get rid of enough body fat in this way, then those muscles may begin to show -- if you're a man. If you're a woman, don't worry. You're never going to bulk up. A lot of women are mistakenly afraid of strength training. They think that if they pump a few weights they're going to turn into Lou Ferrigno overnight. They think they're going to have this competition muscle-bound body from lifting a couple of weights. Believe me, that is not the case at all. Most of those bodybuilding women have trained for years, even decades, just to produce that kind of muscle mass. Women are not built to puts on lots of muscle mass, so don't be afraid that you'll bulk up. Women who are afraid of exercising because they think it's going to make them look bigger have it all wrong.

Let's take a moment to cover that myth here. Let's say you're a woman and you have more body fat than you want. You're trying to decide, "Should I engage in strength training as part of my weight loss program?" Some women say, "No, because I'll bulk up and it'll make me look fatter." That's a complete myth; it's totally false.

When you have a high percentage of body fat, that body fat is stored not only in the tissues that are obvious -- such as your hips and your midsection, your arms and legs and so on -- it's also stored intramuscularly, which means it's stored within the muscles of your body. It's sort of like the marbling of beef from a cow. If you slice a muscle from a cow, there's some fat inside the muscle -- that is the same kind of fat that's in our muscles when we have a high percentage of body fat.

That fat takes up a lot of space in the muscle, so it actually makes the muscle look bigger, because there's fat inside. When you start losing body fat, even if you're engaged in strength training, that intramuscular fat will begin to vanish. So even if your muscle mass begins to grow -- which, again, is very difficult for women to accomplish -- your overall muscle size is probably going to be smaller when you're at a lower percentage of body fat. The net change in your muscle size is going to be almost nothing, unless you really start to do strength training on a regular basis for a period of a year or two, and then you might actually begin to put on a little bit more muscle.

So with that crazy myth covered, let's get back to the main point here, which is that engaging in strength training will conserve the muscle mass you have now. Now here's why this is so important. It's very easy for your body to shed useless muscle. So if you're not using a muscle, your body will get rid of it over a few months. It's gone. But to gain that muscle back -- now that takes some effort! That could take months or years of strength training. It is much harder for your body to engage in anabolic reactions (to build muscle mass) than it is for your body to catabolize and get rid of muscles. So, if you decide you're going to starve yourself while you lose weight and get down to the minimum weight possible, and afterwards you engage in strength training, then you're going to find that it's a much more difficult process to gain lean body mass than it was to slim away what you had to begin with. Building lean body mass is a huge challenge.

It's also important to note that when people talk about weight loss, they throw that term around without really understanding what it means. Everybody says "I want to lose weight," but they don't really mean that. They mean they want to lose body fat; they don't want to just lose weight. A limb amputation will cause you to lose weight, but that's not what people have in mind! People want to lose body fat. So be careful what you wish for.