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Resistance
is NOT futile! When it comes to changing your
body for the better quickly and permanently, nothing
comes close to good old-fashioned weight training.
The
shape of your body is determined by three things:
muscle, bone and fat. While there's really nothing
you can do about changing your bone structure,
there is a whole lot you can do about muscle and
fat. This ratio of muscle to fat is commonly known
as your body composition.
And what is the fastest way to change your body
composition? Weight training. Why is it so effective?
Because it builds muscle.
Muscle
is the key to changing your body. While fat certainly
gives your body shape, muscle is what gives you
the shape you actually WANT!
One
of the greatest things about muscle is that it
burns calories all day long, even when you're
lying on the couch. What this means is that the
more muscle you have, the more calories you'll
burn during the day and the more you'll be able
to eat without gaining weight. Sound interesting?
There's more.
Weight
training stimulates your metabolism more than
aerobic training such as cycling or walking. This
means that you'll continue to burn calories long
AFTER you've completed your weight training session.
The calorie-burning effect of aerobic training
generally declines rapidly once you stop the exercise.
Beginning
trainers, who are just starting with exercise,
are often under the impression that they should
stay away from weight training because they might
gain weight before they start losing it.
I like
to use a car as an analogy. Imagine your body
is a car, your muscles are the cylinders in the
engine, and your bodyfat is the gas.
With
a four-cylinder car, you only burn a minimum amount
of gas/fat. Weight training and building more
muscle is the equivalent of putting more cylinders
into your engine. As you can imagine, you'll burn
a whole lot more gas even while idling! And, just
like a car with more cylinders, you'll be a lot
more powerful too!
The bottom line to you is this...with more muscle,
you'll get greater fat loss with less effort.
While
it certainly is a possibility that you could gain
weight before losing it, if you gauge your success
solely by numbers on a scale then you're not getting
an accurate picture of yourself. Measure your
progress by how you feel, how you look and how
well your clothes are fitting, not by which direction
the needle on a measuring device is moving.
At
the end of the day, I'm not suggesting for a moment
that you should eliminate cardiovascular training
from your exercise routine, but, if you are struggling
to lose fat and keep it off, weight training may
be just the thing you need to lose that fat and
keep it off for good!
Click
here for more information on weight training exercises
you can do at the gym, including optimized exercise
technique, tricks for improving the exercise and
common errors.
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