Why weight loss requires strength training

Did you know that basic strength training (weight-bearing exercise) is crucial for successfully losing weight and keeping it off?

Calories in, calories out. If you have a calorie deficit, you're going to lose weight, if you consume extra calories, you'll gain body fat. While that's true, it's only part of the picture. Sure, you need a calorie deficit to lose weight, but how does your body actually use calories? It's your lean body mass, that muscle mass underneath your body fat, that burns calories 24/7, allowing you to actually eat more calories without gaining weight.

If you manage to keep all of that muscle mass and bone density in place while you are losing body fat, then you can maintain the high metabolism that's associated with that lean body mass even while you are dropping body fat. But if you starve yourself, you're going to lose all the muscle resources you already have. It's a mistake a lot of people make. They try to lose body fat by starving themselves, and as the body fat vanishes from their body, their muscle mass also disappears.

While it eliminates this muscle mass, your metabolism begins to slow. Remember, it's the lean body mass that's burning calories day in and day out, even when you're doing nothing. If you reduce that muscle mass by allowing it to go away (by not challenging your muscles), then your metabolism is going to slow. A lot of people end up at a place where they've lost the body fat and they're lighter, but it's suddenly so much easier to put on body fat. They don't have the muscle mass they once did, they're not automatically burning calories, and if they overeat just a little bit, they'll start packing on the body fat again.

The solution to all of this, the strategy I want to focus on here, is to engage in strength training while you are losing body fat. If you get rid of enough body fat in this way, then those muscles may begin to show -- if you're a man. If you're a woman, don't worry, you're never going to bulk up. A lot of women are mistakenly afraid of strength training. They think they're going to have this competition muscle-bound body from lifting a couple of weights. That is not the case at all. Women are not built to puts on lots of muscle mass, so don't be afraid that you'll bulk up.

When you have a high percentage of body fat, that body fat is stored not only in the tissues that are obvious -- such as your hips and your midsection, your arms and legs and so on -- it's also stored intramuscularly, which means it's stored within the muscles of your body. It's sort of like the marbling of beef from a cow. If you slice a muscle from a cow, there's some fat inside the muscle -- that is the same kind of fat that's in our muscles when we have a high percentage of body fat.

That fat takes up a lot of space in the muscle, so it actually makes the muscle look bigger, because there's fat inside. When you start losing body fat, even if you're engaged in strength training, that intramuscular fat will begin to vanish. So even if your muscle mass begins to grow -- which, again, is very difficult for women to accomplish -- your overall muscle size is probably going to be smaller when you're at a lower percentage of body fat. The net change in your muscle size is going to be almost nothing, unless you really start to do strength training on a regular basis for a period of a year or two, and then you might actually begin to put on a little bit more muscle.

It's very easy for your body to shed useless muscle. So if you're not using a muscle, your body will get rid of it over a few months. It's gone. But to gain that muscle back -- now that takes some effort! That could take months or years of strength training. So, if you decide you're going to starve yourself while you lose weight and get down to the minimum weight possible, and afterwards you engage in strength training, then you're going to find that it's a much more difficult process to gain lean body mass than it was to slim away what you had to begin with. Building lean body mass is a huge challenge.

One thing to keep in mind when you're using the bathroom scale is that when you first start limiting your calories, your body is going to start burning through its glycogen stores. Glycogen is basically a fuel stored in your body. It stores sugars together with water and locks them up in the tissues and organs of your body like an energy battery, ready for you to use at a future time.

There's water locked in with those calories. That water weighs a lot. So when you start restricting your calories, the first thing your body burns is this extra storage of energy, this extra glycogen. And the glycogen causes you, as it's burned, to shed water. You might look at the scale and think, gee, I lost 5 lbs, but you really lost no body fat whatsoever. It was just water, because your body released glycogen. What usually happens to people when their glycogen store has reached zero is they get really hungry, they think they're in a starvation panic, and then they overeat. Their glycogen stores fill right back up, they gain the 5 lbs back, and usually they overate to such an extent that they store another half a pound of body fat or so. Now they're half a pound heavier than when they began and they lost no body fat whatsoever. It was just a game of glycogen and water storage they saw reflected on the bathroom scale.

There's a system of strength training called static contraction training that is outstanding for maintaining current muscle mass and even enhancing it if you choose to go that far. The best thing is that it takes very little time. Just 15 seconds per muscle group per week. If you engage that muscle for 15 seconds with high intensity contraction, then your body gets the signal that, hey, it needs that muscle. It needs to keep it around. And your body decides NOT to let that muscle go. It just keeps it, because it figures you need it.

Remember, your body has a lot of wisdom, and it's trying to conserve calories. The body wants to get rid of muscles it doesn't need, and in order to keep those muscles, you have to prove to your body that you need them. You can essentially fool your body by engaging in strength training, giving it the message that it needs to hold on to those muscles in order to survive. So in as little as 15 seconds per muscle group, you can tell your body to hold on to your muscle mass. That's a 15 second bicep curl, for example, or a 15 second chest press, or a 15 second leg curl…you get the idea.

Women are additionally benefiting from this system -- when you're dealing with the potential for osteoporosis when you get up in your years, bone density becomes crucial for your overall health. There is no better way in the world to make sure you have strong bone density than to engage in high intensity, short duration strength training exercises.

The key is, as with all forms of exercise, to be sure to work with a qualified health professional before attempting this, especially some of the more high intensity exercises. You may want to ease your way into it and check with your naturopath, doctor or physical therapist to make sure you're ready for this. You don't want to injure yourself -- that would set you back weeks. So take it a little bit at a time. Remember, your body will adapt slowly, so ease into it slowly. By doing all of this, you'll be able to conserve the incredible muscle mass that you have underneath that body fat right now.

The other benefit to doing this is that strength training will greatly increase the speed of your weight loss effort. It will double the effectiveness of any weight loss program you're on. Losing weight by calorie restriction alone is very, very difficult.