I’m a 23 year old male that got out of the army on a medical discharge. I want to burn some fat, but I cannot do much of any workout that requires use of my legs. Can I do high intensity weight lifting to lose weight?
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weights to lose body fat
- Thread starter us11csalyer
- Start date
yes. it will raise your metabolism and the repairing of the muscle causes you to burn fat. the bigger the muscle group being worked, the more this happens.
Repairing muscle doesn't directly use fats. Instead, your body's resting metabolism will increase due to an increase in lean (muscle) tissue, which requires more energy for sustainment than adipose (fat) tissue. Energy sources in this case, and in the case of energy spent rebuilding muscle tissue, doesn't come specifically from fats, but from all three macro nutrients.
However, if you are still taking in more calories than you are burning in a given day, your body is still going to need a place to store the extra energy (ie. fat tissue).
In essence, if you're going to try and lose weight through resistance training alone, you need to develop and adhere to a healthy diet (getting all your food groups) while maintaining a caloric deficit. If you're not sure how to find out how many calories you are burning, do a google search for resting metabolism calculator, as well as a search for energy expenditure during exercise. You should be able to add those up to find your baseline caloric expenditure and you can determine your overall caloric intake from that.
Also remember that you don't want your caloric deficit to be greater than 400-500 calories, or else you may force your body into a "starvation mode" where it will begin to horde calories as fats because it is unsure of it's next meal.
In the end though, it's still easier to create a caloric deficit and burn fats directly though cardio, so I would try getting in as much as you can. In your case, a hand cycle or pool work would probably be your best bet if you have access to them.
Best of luck!
I’m a 23 year old male that got out of the army on a medical discharge. I want to burn some fat, but I cannot do much of any workout that requires use of my legs.
Can I do high intensity weight lifting to lose weight ?
Yes
When it comes to weight training and fat loss, there are probably 3 relevant issues you should keep in mind.
First, as illiniphase4 already pointed out, there is the the fact that over the long term ( i.e. weeks / months ) you'll add some muscle mass simply as a result of weight training and therefore your overall lean muscle mass will go up. And, more muscle at rest ( i.e RMR ) burns more calories - in other words, weight training contributes to bumping your resting metabolism. However that is more of a long term tactic and may only yield somewhere around 5-10+ extra calories being burned per per pound of muscle at rest per day.
Secondly,with respect to the short term, there are the calories you expend while actually completing your 45 - 1 hour weight training session itself. And in terms of long term fat loss, the more calories you burn the better...regardless of how you burn them. So, just doing 60 minutes of weight training is simply another opportunity to burn calories.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, is the fact you get a post workout burn of calories as a result of weight training. It's pertaining to the whole issue of EPOC ( excess post-exercise oxygen consumption ) and that fact that your metabolism is elevated after you do weight training - i.e you're burning more calories ( than you would otherwise ), possibly for as long as 36 + hours after a weight training session.
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Thanks for the feed back.
Also, remember that high intensity does not always mean more weight. Volume of training can be manipulated through variation of amount of resistance and numbers of sets/reps as well as the number of lifts that you perform. More important to high intensity is that you work to exhaustion of a given muscle group for a specific workout.
yes. it will raise your metabolism and the repairing of the muscle causes you to burn fat. the bigger the muscle group being worked, the more this happens.
Not significantly, if someone is trying to lose weight it would be more helpfull to recommend food changes and exercise, with resistance complementing the two.
Repairing muscle doesn't directly use fats. Instead, your body's resting metabolism will increase due to an increase in lean (muscle) tissue, which requires more energy for sustainment than adipose (fat) tissue. Energy sources in this case, and in the case of energy spent rebuilding muscle tissue, doesn't come specifically from fats, but from all three macro nutrients.
However, if you are still taking in more calories than you are burning in a given day, your body is still going to need a place to store the extra energy (ie. fat tissue).
In essence, if you're going to try and lose weight through resistance training alone, you need to develop and adhere to a healthy diet (getting all your food groups) while maintaining a caloric deficit. If you're not sure how to find out how many calories you are burning, do a google search for resting metabolism calculator, as well as a search for energy expenditure during exercise. You should be able to add those up to find your baseline caloric expenditure and you can determine your overall caloric intake from that.
Also remember that you don't want your caloric deficit to be greater than 400-500 calories, or else you may force your body into a "starvation mode" where it will begin to horde calories as fats because it is unsure of it's next meal.
In the end though, it's still easier to create a caloric deficit and burn fats directly though cardio, so I would try getting in as much as you can. In your case, a hand cycle or pool work would probably be your best bet if you have access to them.
Best of luck!
and that also applies to cardio,if you burn the same amount of cals doing weights as you do doing cardio then the fat loss is the same.