Resistance Training for Weight Loss
If you’re not incorporating resistance training into your weight-loss program, you may be missing out. It’s a great way to help your body burn more calories and keep off extra weight.
Adding resistance training to your workout is one of the best ways to get the results you want and help maintain long-term weight management.
The weight-loss professionals at NuvidaRx Weight Loss in Tallahassee, Florida, specialize in designing customized fitness plans that meet every patient’s unique circumstances. Based on your medical history, physical abilities, and weight-loss goals, they recommend a fitness plan with the activities that are most appropriate for your needs.
What is resistance training?
Also referred to as weight training or strength training, resistance training includes any exercise in which your muscles pull or lift against resistance. The resistance makes a movement more difficult to perform.
While resistance training is often associated with dumbbells or barbells, it also includes using kettlebells, power bands, machines, or even your own body weight for resistance.
People of all ages and abilities can safely incorporate resistance training into their weight-loss programs. If you’re new to resistance training, you’ll get the most from your efforts if you work with professionals who can provide the direction you need to do it right.
How resistance training works
As you age, your body begins to lose lean muscle mass. You can preserve and even add to your muscle mass with resistance training.
When your muscles work against resistance, they develop microscopic tears in the muscle fiber. Your body reacts by repairing this damage to help the muscles adapt and become stronger. Resistance training works on the concept that your muscles work to overcome resistance when they are forced to do so.
The weight-loss connection
Resistance training can be an effective tool to supercharge your weight-loss program.
A successful weight-loss plan involves creating a daily calorie deficit. To achieve this, you must take in fewer calories than your body burns so your body will have to use stored fat to burn the calories that are lacking. When your body burns stored fat, the result is weight loss.
Your body burns calories through exercise, non-exercise movement, digestion, and basic bodily functions. However, the amount of calories it burns and for how long varies by activity.
Resistance training makes your body burn calories during your workout and well beyond. This type of exercise elevates your metabolism so you burn calories long after you’ve stopped your training.
Research indicates that the effect may last as long as 38 hours. That metabolic boost, known as afterburn, means that your body may keep burning calories at an accelerated rate for more than a day after you finish working out.
As your body retains and adds lean muscle, you may also benefit from the fact that muscle burns more calories than fat. Even when your body is at rest, having more muscle can help you lose weight. Muscles increase your resting metabolic rate, which means you burn more calories at rest just by maintaining normal body functions.
Long-term benefits of resistance training
Resistance training can contribute to long-term weight management. In addition, resistance training can also:
- Improve your endurance and power
- Give you more stamina as you age
- Help you maintain balance and coordination
- Help prevent osteoporosis by developing stronger bones
These benefits can help you stay active and independent for longer, which enables you to follow a fitness plan that supports long-term weight management.
The team at NuvidaRx Weight Loss has the expertise necessary to determine how resistance training and other types of exercise can help you achieve your goals and succeed in weight management.
Find out more about resistance training and whether it can help boost your weight-loss efforts. Request an appointment online or call our office today at 850-290-7307.