resistance training

Your metabolism increases from toning your muscles, which, in turn, triggers fat to be burned, even when you’re resting.

Convert Bailey, author of The New Fit or Fat states, “Of all the calories burned in the body, 50 to 90 percent are burned by your muscles – even when you sleep.”

Different types of exercises tone the muscles in various ways, but the most effective form of exercise for burning fat is resistance training. That would be any type of exercise that involves the muscles lifting, pushing or pulling some type of tension or resistance. Most commonly, we think of lifting weights. However, just as effective and gaining in popularity, due to their affordability and portability, are resistance bands.

The American College of Sports Medicine states that all it takes for beneficial strength training results is a total of 15 minutes of resistance exercise three or four times a week.

Muscle-making resistance exercise could possibly be the single most effective weapon you can use to combat weight gain, particularly if you’re over 40. Strong, well toned muscles keep your blood circulation high, improve oxygen consumption, rev up calorie burning and increase your overall metabolism. This, in turn, helps you to burn off excess body fat.

Even older people can benefit from muscle toning resistance workouts. Dr. Evans, former director of the Human Physiology Lab at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston has this to say, “We can triple muscle strength in old people. We can make a 90 year old stronger than a 50 year old.”

Beyond aerobic exercise, which burns calories only while you’re doing it, new active muscle fibers developed as a result of resistance training consume calories 24 hrs a day in order to maintain themselves.

Dr. Wayne L. Westcott, Ph.D. conducted an eight-week study of these two types of exercise with 72 men and women. The first group performed only aerobic exercise and lost an average of three pounds of fat and 1/2 pound of muscle. The second group combined brief resistance training sessions and aerobics and lost an average of 10 pounds of fat and gained two pounds of muscle. As stated before, new muscle consumes calories, hence the dramatic difference in fat loss between the two groups. The aerobics group actually cannibalized a 1/2 pound of existing muscle.