I taught my fitness class last night and one of the ladies was a little nervous about using 10 pound weights. She was wondering if she would bulk up? Here's the answer: NO. You will actually lose weight by lifting weights. Women are missing out on their weight loss potential by not strength training. Only 21 percent of women strength train two or more times a week, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. But the weight room is actually the ultimate fat burner.
Speed up your Metabolism
Weight training tones your muscles and raises your metabolism, which helps your body burn more calories. You burn calories while you exercise but you will also keep burning calories while you sleep. Although cardiovascular exercise burns more calories than strength training does while you're in the gym, lifting weights burns more once you leave. That's because strength training increases your body's lean muscle. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn all day long. For anybody over the age of 30, weight training reverses the natural decline of your metabolism.
Toned Muscles
Many women worry that weight training will make them muscular and bulky like Arnold Schwarzenegger. However, men and women have very different muscular and hormone levels. Women do not have enough testosterone in their bodies to produce that much size gain. Women have 10-30% less hormones that cause bulky muscle in men.
Speed up your Metabolism
Weight training tones your muscles and raises your metabolism, which helps your body burn more calories. You burn calories while you exercise but you will also keep burning calories while you sleep. Although cardiovascular exercise burns more calories than strength training does while you're in the gym, lifting weights burns more once you leave. That's because strength training increases your body's lean muscle. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn all day long. For anybody over the age of 30, weight training reverses the natural decline of your metabolism.
Toned Muscles
Many women worry that weight training will make them muscular and bulky like Arnold Schwarzenegger. However, men and women have very different muscular and hormone levels. Women do not have enough testosterone in their bodies to produce that much size gain. Women have 10-30% less hormones that cause bulky muscle in men.
Decrease Your Risk of Osteoporosis
Osteoporosis is a disease in which bones become fragile and are more likely to break. Most of our bone mass is established before the age of 30, and after about age 35, as a part of the normal aging process, our bodies begin to breakdown our bone faster than we are able to rebuild it. The natural decline in hormonal production is another contributing factor. When women reach menopause and their ovaries stop producing estrogen and bone loss accelerates. In men a reduction in the hormone testosterone also encourages bone loss. There is no cure for osteoporosis, so disease prevention is vital to maintaining bone density. Smoking, low body weight and a lack of exercise are all contributing factors to raising our susceptibility to the disease. Weight-bearing exercises like walking, stair climbing, dancing and weight training help to increase bone density, keep muscles flexible and ensure better physical balance in people of all ages. Exercise also helps to regulate body weight to a healthy level.
Lose Weight
The average woman who strength trains two to three times a week for two months will gain nearly two pounds of muscle and will lose 3.5 pounds of fat, according to studies by Wayne Wescott, PhD. In just 10 weeks, that means you can reduce your overall body fat by 3% without changing your diet. That means as many as three inches off your waist and hips.
No More Happy Pills
10 weeks of strength training reduces clinical depression symptoms more successfully than standard counseling does according to Tom Cruise (just kidding it was a Harvard study). Lifting weights makes you feel strong, improves your self esteem, and therefore helping to fight depression.
So the moral of the story is GO PICK UP THOSE WEIGHT!
