Brace yourselves! The battle between cardio and weight training has come to a stand still. Why? Because we have the key that will help you shed those extra pounds.
You run, run, and run some more and yet you aren’t seeing any results. All of that effort with such little reward. The answer is simple: Cardio is not the fastest way to lose weight, and it’s certainly not the only way. Yep, we’re talking about weights, people.
We know you’ve heard that strength training can’t help you burn fat, but think again! Most people are too worried about how many calories they need to burn in the gym when really, you should start focusing on how your body expends calories outside the gym. Whether you believe it or not, you burn calories throughout the day no matter what you’re doing, but exercise helps increase the rate at which you burn those calories. When you’re working out, you increase the rate in which you burn, but once you stop, you quickly go back to your normal metabolic rate.
Strength training is the number-one way to build more muscle with the added bonus that it helps you burn more calories — even when you’re doing nothing but sitting on the couch. “For every three pounds of muscle you gain, you can expect to burn an extra 120 calories a day without moving a single one of those muscles,” explains Personal Trainer, Mike Donavanik. The more muscle you have, the more fuel you are constantly burning.
So as much as you think that a treadmill or elliptical is best way to lose that fat, and they are very useful if your goal is to improve cardiovascular health, endurance or simply to burn some extra calories, but strength training is a powerful ally when it comes to burning calories and losing excess weight.
