WOMEN, SHOULD YOU HIT THE WEIGHTS?

The first thing that the trainer told me and the other ladies that started that day that were very overweighted was no weights for the first weeks. You should only do cardio until you lose some of the fat so it doesn’t bulk you up because it can turn into muscle. What!?

So, for the following weeks I only did cardio for and nothing else, while the rather skinny chicks were allowed to be on the machines and even have sweet drinks while at the gym. Whao, huh? Well, it seemed like common sense at the time, after all, what did I know. And still today that’s a misconception that’s still preventing a lot of women to do resistance training. They still think they’ll bulk up like a guy if they too much and that’s only for men, right? If someone told me something like that know I would turn around and walk the other way.

What if I tell you that the most effective way to lose fat, yes, you read it well, not build muscle, TO LOSE FAT, is resistance training? It trumps cardio everytime. Yes ladies, you should be hitting the weights from day one at the gym or at home if you want to lose fat faster.

The reason for this is that when you go on a resistence training program you put your muscles through a lot of stress so your body has to work very hard to recover from all that hard work. In the process a lot of calories are burned because your muscles have their own metabolism.

By working out like this you will keep burning calories even after the workout is over. Yes, because your body is still working to get things back to normal. So your body becomes a fat burning machine. When you do a 30 min. cardio session you will only lose 200 to 300 calories, 400 if your exercise was intense. But the fat burning effect will only last while the workout lasts. After you go home you won’t burn any more calories.

I mean, go online and look for the leanest, more toned and sexy women out there. Do you think they got that body doing just cardio? No way. They hit the weights, and they do it hard.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a place for cardio in your workouts, but 1) it shouldn’t be your number one resource to burn fat and 2) you have to do the right type of cardio, which is high intensity sprint like cardio, in which you work with all your efforts for a short period of time and then you rest for short period of time. That type of cardio protocol burns a lot more calories than low to moderate intensity cardio.

So ladies, next time your so called training expert tells you that the weights are not for you, you know what to do.

Virginia Jimenez