Some people think that weight lifting is going to add weight on, but it actually helps you to lose weight and burn calories at a faster rate than if you were just flabby and had a lot of body fat. However, it is important that you still do cardio as well when you are doing your workout regimen, to maintain the actual calorie burning piece of the workout. The thing with lifting weights is that the actual weight lifting itself doesn’t burn tons of calories in and of itself, like cardio activity does, but when you build muscle mass, you actually burn calories at a higher, faster rate when you are sitting still, and that’s where you get your bang for the buck from weightlifting.

Not only do you have a better resting metabolism when you lift weights and build lean muscle mass, but you also will get a lot more comments on looking great because of the fact that lifting weights makes you look cut and buff. Just doing a lot of cardio will keep you thin, but it’s the weightlifting that will actually shape and sculpt your body, and get you noticed.

One trick to burning calories is that you can up the repetitions and keep the weight the same, and then bump up your weight in pounds, and bump up your reps again when that one actually gets too easy. This is a good way to get a good calorie burn in with your weight lifting repertoire. Not to mention, you can get ripped and sculpted doing it this way!

I love using lighter weights and lots of reps because I actually feel like I am doing some sort of lighter cardio, and I feel like I’m burning off some sort of stress – maybe it’s therapeutic, but it feels like I’m doing something that gets the anxiety out!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 11:50 am and is filed under Fitness Equipment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.