Can strength training help you lose weight?

Yes, but its "weight loss effect" is often not reflected on the scale immediately, which is also the core reason why many people misunderstand that it is useless.

The fitness circle has been arguing about this matter for almost ten years. People who love horse racing and vaulting say that strength training is slow to lose weight, but pure aerobics combined with diet can lose 3 pounds in a week, and the results are much faster.； Veterans of iron-based swimming pools also say that aerobic weight loss is faster and rebound is faster, and strength training is the best solution for "weight loss without rebound". There is actually nothing wrong with what both sides say, but the definitions of "weight loss" are different.

I once took care of a girl who worked in Internet operations. She started doing aerobics on the Internet and lost 10 pounds in two months. She was happy for only two weeks. She had barbecue milk tea for three days during the company team building, and she immediately gained 8 pounds. She cried and asked me how to prevent herself from rebounding. I asked her to switch to strength training three times a week, for 40 minutes each time. The diet only required her to drink less full-sugar milk tea, not to show off at late-night barbecues, and not to starve to the point of fainting. In the first two months, she stood on the scale and scolded me every day, saying that her weight had not changed at all. It was not until the third month that she took out the high-waisted short skirt that she couldn't put on last year. When she zipped it up, there was still a finger gap. When she took a physical test, she found that her body fat rate had dropped by 3.8%, and even her visceral fat, which was previously high, had dropped by one level.

In fact, when we usually talk about "losing weight", 90% of people default to "losing weight", but the real fat loss is to reduce the proportion of fat in the body. The density of muscle is almost three times that of fat, and the volume of muscle with the same weight is only one-third that of fat. In the early stage of your strength training, the muscle mass slowly increases and the fat slowly decreases. Once the weight of the two offsets, of course the number on the scale will not change, but the body shape has already quietly tightened, and it looks much thinner than if you lost three to five kilograms of water. Moreover, strength training has an advantage that cannot be compared with aerobic exercise called "excess oxygen consumption." In human terms, in the 24 to 48 hours after you finish training, your body will consume extra calories to repair muscles, which is equivalent to consuming half a cup of milk tea more calories than before when you lie down and sleep. After the metabolism is improved, as long as you don't eat haise all the time, it will not be easy to rebound.

Of course, it doesn’t mean that you can lose weight just by touching dumbbells. Those who say that strength training cannot lose weight either have an appetite after training and eat hot pot and fried chicken, consuming more than they consume, or they go to the gym for two hours to take photos and then leave after touching dumbbells for ten minutes. The amount of training is not in place at all. This pot really cannot be blamed on strength training.

If you are anxious to lose weight in a week for a physical examination or wedding photos, then aerobics combined with diet will indeed have faster results. However, if you want to have a good-looking shoulder line in a suspender and a well-proportioned leg in jeans after losing weight, and will not lose weight after eating a few mouthfuls, then you can really try strength training, and don't be fooled by the number on the scale. Oh, by the way, ordinary girls really don’t have to worry about building big muscles. With just the amount of training we do three times a week, it is much more difficult to build muscular arms than to get a promotion and a salary increase. Why worry about it?