ARTICLE - FEMALE WEIGHT TRAIING HELPS WITH WEIGHT LOSS

SUMMARY

THE ARTICLE

Trying to lose weight is practically our national pastime. It is estimated that at least 40% Australian women and 20% Australian men are "on a diet" at any one time. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be working 95% of Australians who undertake weight loss diets regain everything they have lost plus more within two years.¹

What’s going wrong?

It may be that low-kilojoule dieting alone simply doesn’t work. In fact, diets in general don’t usually work because after you go “on a diet”, at some point you have to come “off the diet”. Ceasing to follow the diet inevitably leads to weight regain, often greater than the amount that has been lost. To keep the weight off for good, instead of dieting, you need to make some permanent lifestyle changes to both your eating and exercise habits.

The other problem with low-kilojoule dieting is that about 25 percent of the weight loss may be muscle according to one study conducted in 1994.² Losing muscle is detrimental to your weight loss efforts, because muscle tissue is metabolically active and increases the amount of energy expended just to maintain itself.

There has been no universally agreed rate of energy expenditure for muscle tissue, because of the difficulty in measuring this, in addition to the vast variability between individuals. To illustrate the negative effects of muscle loss however, let’s use a generally accepted figure of approximately 300kJ expended per kilogram of muscle per day.

Suppose you lose 5 kilos on a low-kilojoule diet. If, as the reference above indicates, 25% of that loss is muscle, then you’ve lost 1.25 kilos of muscle. That means you’re burning around 375 kilojoules less per day than if you hadn’t lost that muscle! Thus, maintaining your muscle tissue (or even increasing it) is vital to sustaining weight loss over the long term.

Aerobic exercise isn’t enough

In our efforts to lose weight, we are constantly reminded of the importance of cardiovascular exercise. We must burn more calories than we consume to lose weight. It is often assumed that the fastest way to accomplish a calorie deficit is to walk, run, jog, swim, bike, dance; anything to get the body moving and the kilojoules burning.

However, did you know that resistance (weight) training is just as critical to successful weight loss? We’re not talking about weight training like a bodybuilder to yield bulky muscles. Rather, undertaking a weight training routine that is conductive of weight loss. This could be accomplished by utilizing your body weight, milk bottles, or more commonly the weight equipment at the gym.

Why is strength training so helpful to losing weight? Strength training helps maintain your metabolically active muscle tissue. As was indicated earlier, muscle tissue burns energy even when you aren’t exercising.

A moderate intensity aerobic workout such as stair climbing, jogging, or cycling will burn around 1250 kilojoules per hour (obviously variable dependent upon the level of intensity of that exercise). The activity raises your metabolism for several hours following that workout. However, strength training has the ability to raise your metabolism permanently.

Your Basal Metabolic Rate, or BMR, refers to the amount of energy your body needs to maintain itself at rest. Our BMR accounts for 50-80% of our total daily energy expenditure, so increasing your BMR will burn more kilojoules throughout the day.³ Strength training increases your muscle tissue and therefore your BMR.

One study evaluated the effects of resistance training on a group of male subjects. After 16 weeks of strength training, the participants lost an average of 1.9kg of body fat and gained 1.6kg of fat free mass. Their metabolism increased by 549 kilojoules per day.⁴

How does weight training speed up our metabolism? A recent study from Boston University revealed that the specific kind of muscle tissue created by resistance training stimulates fat burning by other tissues, such as the liver.⁵ If more of our body is stimulated to burn fat, our BMR will increase, and we can lose more fat. In fact, Campbell and colleagues in 1994 determined that participants who performed three months of basic strength training gained 1.3 kilos of muscle and lost 1.8 kilos of fat, while eating 1500 more kilojoules per day!⁶

Here’s where it’s important to remember that when we say we want to lose weight, we really mean we want to lose fat. Losing weight can mean losing muscle, which as we’ve seen is not at all what we want to do. If you simply undertake a low-kilojoule diet and starve your body, you may lose “weight” but you will also lose muscle tissue and slow down your BMR, which leads to that vicious cycle of regaining the weight once you start reverting to old eating habits again. To avoid this vicious cycle, you must engage in some sort of weight or strength training.

Won’t I bulk up?

Many women are afraid of looking like a bodybuilder if they lift weights. This is simply not going to happen. Women don’t have the necessary level of hormones, particularly testosterone, necessary to bulk up and get those muscles you see on the covers of bodybuilding magazines or the posters in the gym. The women you see on those magazines dedicate their lives to build muscle, spending many hours in the gym lifting weights. Some even take anabolic steroids. With some typical weight training, regular women will obtain a toned look, nothing more.

How much weight training do I have to do?

Not much! A study by Fitness Management Magazine examined the impact of weight training on body composition.⁷ They divided 72 overweight men and women into two groups. Each group exercised 30 minutes a day for 8 weeks and ate the exact same diets. One of the groups spent the 30 minutes of exercise doing aerobic activity, while the second group spent 15 minutes doing aerobic exercise and just 15 minutes of strength training using Nautilus machines. The results looked like this:

You don’t even have to do strength training every day. Research shows that as little as two 15-20 minute strength-training sessions per week is sufficient to gain the benefits we’ve talked about here.

Here’s a sample 2 day programme that’s appropriate for beginners who have not lifted weights before. Be sure to allow at least 1-2 days between strength-training workouts, because our muscles rebuild and get stronger during our rest days. If you want to strength train on consecutive days, be sure to work different muscles each day so that your muscles all have at least a day’s rest between sessions.

If you are new to weight training, you should seriously consider enlisting the expertise of a personal trainer to help you set up your programme and explain each of these exercises. Proper technique is essential to weight training to prevent injury and get the most benefits.

Perform 10-12 repetitions if each exercise below. You should lift a weight that’s heavy enough to make the last two repetitions difficult to complete (but not impossible). Once you can easily do 12 repetitions at a certain weight, add a few kilograms the following week.

Day 1 (Legs/Pull)

3x Incline Leg Press
2x Standing Ball Squats
3x Lat Pulldown
2x Seated Row
3x Standing Barbell Bicep Curls

Day 2 (Push/Abs)

3x Seated Chest Press Machine
2x Knee Push Ups
3x Seated Shoulder Press Machine
3x Bench Dips
3x Floor Crunches

If you wish to add a third day during the week, repeat Day 1. The following week, alternate Day 2, Day 1, Day 2. Again, be sure to rest at least one day between strength training sessions.

References

¹http://www.healthyweightweek.com.au/index.asp?pageID=2145857411

²Poehlman et al., “Caloric Restriction Mimetics Physical Activity and Body Composition Changes” J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci (2001) 56 (suppl 1): 45-54.

³ http://www.goforyourlife.vic.gov.au/hav/articles.nsf/pages/Metabolism_explained?open

⁴ Pratley et al. “Strength training increases resting metabolic rate and norepinephrine levels in healthy 50- to 65-yr-old men” Journal of Applied Physiology, Vol 76, Issue 1 133-137

⁵ http://www.bu.edu/today/2008/02/08/research-suggests-weight-training-equals-weight-loss

⁶Campbell, W., M. Crim, V. Young and W. Evans. Increased energy requirements and changes in body composition with resistance training in older adults. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 60: 167-175, 1994.

⁷http://www.shelterpub.com/_fitness/_office_fitness_clinic/OFC_wt_mgmt.html

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