Why strength training removes extra fat....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 3-17-2016

It’s still surprisingly little known that effective strength training removes extra fat. 

And that goes double for women!

Strength training removes extra fat in several ways.

1.  People who are working to lose fat who get too hungry fail. 

They eventually eat too much or worse they eat fattening foods to do so,

People who do effective strength training can eat more and still lose fat.

And, if they also eat a high protein diet of health OK protein foods, they get LESS hungry and ONLY lose fat besides.

So, they can lose fat without the hunger that causes failure!

2.  Muscles that are not used atrophy.  How does that relate to strength training and excess fat?

People who don’t do effective strength training lose about 1% of their muscle mass each year after about age 24.

Most people adopt a food intake they are comfortable with and don’t change it.

Even if they don’t eat fattening foods, by age 44 they have 20% less muscle mass. 

And since muscles burn a lot of calories if they eat as they always have – which almost everyone does – by age 44 instead of about 56 % of their weight as muscle they may have started with, now about 45 % is muscle mass.

But muscle burns three times as many calories as fat.  So if they eat as they always have, instead of just losing 9% of their bodyweight, they add three times that much as fat.

So, if they start at 160 pounds, they replace that lost 14 pounds of muscle with 43 pounds of fat.  Only 29 pounds show up on the scale.  But that is enough fat gain to slow them down and often help give them health problems that this added body fat causes.

Worse, by age 64 without strength training, they will have lost a total of 29 pounds of muscle and gained 86 pounds of fat of which 57 will show on the scale.

Strength training can totally prevent this.  

And, though it’s harder to reverse, effective strength training can reverse this AND has done so for many people!

This happens to BOTH men and women.  Some men do strength training and prevent it.

But most women think of strength training as something only men do and do not. 

Worse, the women who do what they think of as strength training use such tiny weights -- even for how strong they actually are in the beginning, many of the women who strength train are not even close to doing it effectively!

(By the way, women have ZERO need to worry that effective strength training will make them look unattractive.  The women who do strength training well have dramatically better looking bodies than other women.)

If you can afford one or two sessions a week and a few hundred a month per session and live near one, The Perfect Workout solves this problem for women and does it well.

Each session only has 20 minutes of strength training and takes about a half hour visit each time.

But because they move quickly from exercise to exercise AND on every one you use enough weight to be challenging, you get effective strength training in just one or two a week of these sessions.

Not only that, each one comes with a personal coach who only has you in your session to help you work hard enough to get results.  They also cheer you on and encourage you.

Does this work for women too! Oh yes! By now they have hundreds of testimonials from women clients it has really helped.

Not only that, because they use slow rep strength training, the challenging weights are less than what you might use for fast reps AND because you start each lift a bit slower too, the combination makes injuries dramatically less likely.

(In my case, when I read slow rep strength training in this style was effective, even before I began the sessions at The Perfect Workout my wife and I signed up for, I tried the style using the dumbbells and the exercises I had been doing at home. 

WOW!  As soon as I was done, each of the muscles I’d used felt “pumped” and super well exercised.  This had never happened doing fast reps before that.

We posted yesterday about how this lactic acid build up causes your body to make more mitochondria and slow aging in addition to the increases in strength and muscle mass!

Slow rep strength training does this for me when regular speed reps never did!

After several months our costs went up and I had to stop going to The Perfect Workout.

But I simply kept doing the slow rep exercises at home two times a week.

Now, I can do 12 reps super slow and about 24 reps a bit slower with 50 pounds in each hand in an exercise that caused me to get sore doing 9 reps with 35 pounds to begin with.

I can see my arms and shoulders are slightly bigger and much less fat than when I began.

To make more progress overall I’m now working on two ways to use more weight in the exercises that use the much bigger muscles in my lower back, glutes, and the rest of my legs.)

The first solution I’m working on is to use more weight at home.

But the better solution I’m headed for is to be able to go to a gym that has heavier barbells.

For bench presses and squats I may need to use less weight since for those and the heaviest weights, you need spotters.  But I’ll still use much heavier weights than I have at home.

But for deadlifts I’ll be able to do more and use more challenging weights.

Young men who do those lifts well and make progress can gain 15 to 25 pounds of muscle in their first year.

(Women gain less and their higher fat percentage even when healthy hides much of that.)

Since I’m 72 and will be limited in how often I go, I expect to gain far less.

But if my at home solution enables me to gain 3 pounds more muscle, because I control how much I eat, that means I’ll lose 9 pounds of fat and be 6 pounds lighter on the scale.

Then, if I can add another 3 pounds of muscle by going to a gym with its heavier weights, I’ll lose another 9 pounds of fat for a total of 18 lost minus the 6 pound gain of muscle; and I’ll be 12 pounds lighter on the scale.

That will take me from 19% fat to 8% fat.  So, if I manage it, I will look and be dramatically less fat!)

3.  There is one caution to ensure strength training even when done properly is effective.

You have to eat enough protein to feed your exercised muscles for them to get stronger and larger.

a) For example, The Perfect Workout had a woman client who was working hard but getting unusually poor results.

After finding out what she ate, they discovered she was eating an unusually low protein diet.

They also found research showing that the minimum protein intake to support effective strength training is about 1.5 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight.

They had her add enough protein foods to get her to that level and she promptly began to make progress again.

In her case she was only about 132 pounds or 60 kilograms. So she needed 90 grams of protein each day from her food.

b) Bodybuilders and Power lifters who are the experts from actual experience in adding muscle from strength training have found that a gram of protein for each pound of bodyweight is the optimum level.

c)  Since 19% of me is fat, a lower number that looks likely to be effective is to eat a gram of protein a day for each of the 142 pounds of lean bodyweight I want to achieve instead of the 162 to 165 grams a day needed for the gram per pound of my current bodyweight.

I eat health OK dairy protein and beans and lentils and nonstarchy vegetables and nuts and wild caught salmon for most of my protein now.

But to eat that much protein I need more.

What can I do to do this?

Add a protein supplement of some kind.

But which kind is most effective?

And which version of it is safe for my health to eat?

Over fifty years ago they answered the first part of that question.

Research was done that found that taking amino acids in the same percentage of each one that makes up human lean tissue produces the most gains from strength training.

But how can anyone afford to have that measured and get a custom-tailored amino acid drink with those percentages?!

Recently I found out there is no need to do that because a food with those exact percentages already exists!!

Whey has exactly the same amino acid percentage as lean tissue and muscle.

Not only that there are several sources of whey from cows fed only grass that are the safest to eat.

(I like and use unflavored grass fed whey from Jarrow.  But there are other kinds that cost more and may be slightly better for you. Whole Foods carries many of these.)

I get 40 extra grams of protein a day by mixing in two oversized scoops of the Jarrow grass fed whey that have about 20 grams of protein each to my daily glass of grass fed milk.

I may need to add a bit more to get to the 142 grams a day.  But for now, I clearly have gotten the 1.5 grams per kilogram by adding that 40 grams of whey.

And, since it is the most effective kind of protein that might be all I’ll need.

Whey also has an extra couple of bonuses! 

Branched chain amino acids have been found to build muscle well. Do you need to pay extra for them and take them?  Not if you eat enough whey!  It’s LOADED with them!

Also Mike Matthews has found that when working to lose fat, getting enough of an amino acid called, HMB, helps prevent muscle loss.  You can get an HMB supplement.  Do you need to pay extra for this slightly pricey supplement and take it?  Not if you eat enough whey!  Whey also has enough HMB.

So there you have it!

If you do effective slow rep strength training and include exercises for your lower back and glutes and the rest of your legs and use relatively heavy weights and eat enough protein and include enough whey to do so, you can:

Totally avoid age related muscle loss.

Lose weight ALL of which is fat.

And, you can gain enough muscle to force fat loss by doing that alone!