Does Weight Lifting Burn Fat? (From A Physician)

Lifting weights provides a distinct weight reduction benefit compared to other exercises.

It helps you with building muscle and losing fat mass at the same time.

When resting, your muscle tissue burns more calories than visceral fat.

While building muscle, your system will be burning fat at rest at a much faster pace than it had before you developed muscle [1].

As a result, your resting metabolic rate rises, and you burn calories each day. The more muscles you have, the higher the metabolism and the faster you lose body fat [2].

Adding muscle-building and strength training workouts such as lifting heavy weights can be a game-changer to your weight loss goal.

I’ve seen a huge shift in my clients’ overall performance and body composition once they swapped endless cardio sessions for weights, especially after introducing weight sessions focused on compound movements.

Strength training workouts, especially those based on stop-start weight training exercises, also burn through muscular glycogen [4].

After refilling the glycogen with food after working out, the blood sugar doesn’t hang around much, and with time, your body’s insulin sensitivity improves [5].

Your body will improve at using the blood sugar for muscle energy rather than converting it into fat.

"Obviously, burning more calories throughout the day, in conjunction with a balanced diet, will boost your fat loss."

- Wendy Batts, Master Instructor at National Academy of Sports Medicine

Lastly, the total calorie burn is much higher than with cardio workouts. See, after cardio, the heart rate and metabolism resume normalcy in a few hours [6].

But if you jack up your weights, you’ll enjoy the effects of the workout even much later after you’re done (afterburn) [7].

It's like double-dipping your workouts. That’s not the only benefit.

The extra muscle mass gained from heavy resistance training is necessary to keep you from gaining fat back after losing it.

The muscles will require extra calories to maintain their mass rather than the calories being turned into fat.

Compound workouts are significantly better for losing body fat.

The workouts generate bigger responses as a result of the increased demand, which means you get fitter quicker.

Another effect of high-demand compound workouts on your body is that you lose more weight.

Because fewer reps of squats engage more muscles and burn more fat than a few reps of lateral raises, concentrating your training on complex exercises implies you'll build more muscle for your bucks in the fitness center.

Compound exercises have been demonstrated to promote power and lean muscle mass growth faster than isolation workouts [8].

3. Keeping Your Lifting Sessions Short

It’s easy to assume that longer lifting sessions will burn more fat.

But that’s not the truth.

Instead, I suggest you switch your mentality from counting the number of hours spent in the gym to focus on the intensity of your workouts [9].

For example, a genuine and intense workout shouldn’t be longer than 45 minutes. If you’re doing everything correctly, you’re likely to get fatigued in a short time.