Fitness N Muscle

Weight lifting is a must when it comes to losing weight/fat. Not heavy lifting, just light lifting, going to about 20 reps, reaching failure. Including some weights in your workout or any kind of resistance will assist in weight loss because the more lean muscle you gain, the more your body will burn calories per day. Your body burns an extra 30-70 calories a day with 1 pound of muscle. The more lean muscle, the more your total calories burned increases and the more it will benefit you. In the long run, this will make your weight loss/fat loss progress a lot easier because it will help you burn a lot of extra calories throughout the day, which will total to a large amount in a month or year. Weight lifting may not burn as much calories in one workout period as cardio might, but you will experience the after burn effect which will continue to burn calories, for many hours after your workout!

Weight lifting is also recommended because it will give you a nice body structure. Then once you lose weight, you will look fit and healthy. Also, when you do high intensity cardio or when you diet, you will likely be losing lean muscle which is not what you would want, so you want to make sure you try and make some muscle gains through out your progress. Having muscle can also assist and benefit you in many other areas. It will help prevent muscle/bone injuries, which can be caused in a sport activity or in any kind of labor-intensive activity. Weight lifting will also promote balance and energy, which will be advantageous in any sport activity or labor type of work.

When doing your weight lifting, you want to make sure you go in the higher rep range. This is what makes your workout more effective, because you are using more energy, which means you are burning more calories. You also want to make sure you exercise the biggest muscle groups by doing compound exercises - this means doing exercises that use multiple muscles. For example, for legs, you can do squats of 20 reps. I would say doing an exercise like squats is better than cardio because you are getting a cardiovascular workout while building muscle at the same time! Doing squats incorporates many large muscles, and by doing many repetitions, you are burning a lot of energy. This is what makes you burn a big amount of calories, and give you a bigger after burn effect. When you are lifting weights, try not to really do any isolation exercises of small muscles like bicep curls, because this is not really benefiting you at all with weight loss. This is true because the bicep is a really small muscle compared to the rest of the muscles in your body and it doesn't really burn calories, due to it being a small and easy movement. It would be better to work biceps by doing exercises that work your back muscles as well, like chin ups.

It is recommended that you make your muscles rest after a weight training workout and not work the same muscle groups the very next day. It is best to alternate between muscle groups everyday. However, you can do your cardio on every workout day. But make sure to give your body rest at least once or twice a week (i.e. where you do no exercise at all). If you are planning to lift weights and do cardio in a workout session, start with the weight training first and then cardio. This is because you want to make sure you have all your energy for the lifting and not waste it on the cardio.