How does lifting weights burn fat

And should you try it if you're already happy with your current workout routine? Here, nearly a dozen reasons that'll convince you to pick up those heavy dumbbells. Build more muscle and you'll keep your body burning fat all day long — that's the science behind why lifting weights burns more fat than many other fitness modalities.

Here's all the science behind why muscle helps you burn fat and calories. Burning extra calories post-workout plus building muscle? That's the surefire way to get the body you want. In recent research on overweight or obese adults age 60 and over , the combination of a low-calorie diet and weight training resulted in greater fat loss than a combination of a low-calorie diet and walking workouts, according to a study published in the journal Obesity.

The adults who walked instead of weight trained did lose a comparable amount of weight—but a significant portion of the weight loss included lean body mass. Meanwhile, the adults who did strength training maintained muscle mass while losing fat. This suggests that strength training is better at helping people lose belly fat compared with cardio because while aerobic exercise burns both fat and muscle, weight lifting burns almost exclusively fat.

While it is true that you can't spot reduce — your body is born with pre-conceived places it wants to store fat based on a slew of factors — a University of Alabama study found that the women who lifted weights lost more intra-abdominal fat deep belly fat than those who just did cardio. Burning more belly fat may also contribute to general weight loss from lifting weights. And the benefits of lifting weights don't stop there. You'll build a more defined muscular physique, but it also lessens your risk of diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and some cancers.

Not to mention, lifting heavy weights recruits your core, giving you an abs workout without even trying. Strength training may have a reputation of making women "bulk up," but it's not true.

The more your weight comes from muscle rather than fat the leaner you'll be. Plus, it's difficult for women to get body-builder huge. To seriously gain size, you'd pretty much need to live in the weight room. Love the lean, defined muscles on super-fit ladies? Here's why you can lift heavy and won't bulk up. If you want more proof, watch this video with two-time Reebok CrossFit Games champion Annie Thorisdottir , who has a great body and certainly isn't afraid to throw around heavy weights.

Just sitting on your butt reading this, you're burning calories — if you lift weights, that is. You may burn more calories during your 1-hour cardio class than you would lifting weights for an hour, but a study published in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that women who lifted weights burned an average of more total calories during the 24 hours after their training session ended. Another study published in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Metabolism found that, following a minute strength training session, young women's basal metabolic rate spiked by 4.

Women who lifted more weight for fewer reps 85 percent of their max load for 8 reps burned nearly twice as many calories during the two hours after their workout than when they did more reps with a lighter weight 45 percent of their max load for 15 reps. Up next: 7 Common Muscle Myths, Busted.

This results in a greater resting metabolic rate your metabolism when you're just sitting or sleeping and more calories burned each day. It's not an incredibly significant difference, despite long-standing myths , but it does help. Just know that lifting weights isn't a magic ticket to weight loss: You must sustain a calorie deficit over time, so if you're lifting every day but still eating more calories than you burn, you won't see the progress you want.

Read more : How to calculate and track your macros. This really depends on your goals. In simplest terms, lift weights first if your primary goal is to build muscle or get stronger.

Do cardio first if your primary goal is to build speed or endurance. In reality, the question of " Weights or cardio first? You don't have to do both at every gym session.

Read more : Double the benefits of exercise by exercising outside. This, too, depends on your goals. One really isn't better than the other unless you're aiming for a very specific goal. For example, if I wanted to compete in a powerlifting competition, where the barbell back squat is one of the main events, I would lift heavy most of the time.

If I wanted to run a marathon , I would lift light weight for a lot of reps to get my heart rate up and train my legs to handle stress for longer periods of time. If you don't have a specific goal in mind, you can benefit from lifting both heavy and light weights. The number of reps you do depends on what type of exercise you're doing, and whether you want to increase strength or endurance. Oh look, another question the answer to which depends on your goals.

Catching a theme? The answer to "how many reps should I lift? Endurance-based goals like improving your running capacity require more reps at lower weights, while strength-based goals like maxing out your deadlift require fewer reps at higher weights. Goals with both endurance and strength components -- like running an obstacle course race -- require both types of training.

You can get fit with other forms of exercise, such as running and hiking, but lifting weights can help speed up the process. Sure thing! Lifting weights is a fantastic way to build muscle mass, get stronger and become healthier overall. Here, we break down in detail what the study found—and how you can maximize your weight-lifting routine for even better fat-burning results.

The research team behind the study simulated weight training in a group of mice. This was accomplished by "incapacitating" most of the rodents' leg muscles, leaving a single muscle to pick up the slack. Predictably, it didn't take long for that muscle in each of the mice to bulk up considerably. Before that happened, the rodents' leg muscles had high amounts of miR-1, a type of genetic material that controls and slows muscle growth. After that one muscle had bulked up, however, muscular miR-1 levels dropped considerably.

Where did all the miR-1 go? The bloodstream and nearby fat tissue. Further experiments in the study revealed that the miR-1 traveled in vesicles tiny sacs that transport material into and out of cells , which targeted fat tissue and cells upon being released into the bloodstream. These vesicles eventually deposited the miR-1 into said fat.

Not long after mirR-1 arrived into fat cells, the cells started to break down. The transfer of miR-1 from muscle tissue to fat tissue seems to provide two benefits simultaneously: muscles can grow and strengthen following a bout of weight training, and the newly arrived miR-1 essentially instructs fat cells to destroy themselves.

As a final component of the study, human subjects agreed to have blood and tissue samples extracted following a lower-body weight training workout. Just like the rodents, participants' muscles had low miR-1 levels while their bloodstreams had high numbers of miR-1 carrying vesicles. This suggests that a similar fat-burning mechanism may be at play in humans after weight-training exercises.

As mentioned earlier, these findings are preliminary. More extensive research is necessary with human subjects before we can determine any definitive takeaways.