Weight Training and Dieting

[Doug]

Importance of Weight Training when Dieting

When you're losing weight, you're likely losing muscle as well as
fat. This is especially true if you're decreasing your daily
calorie intake but not adding strength building activities to your day.

Because muscle can burn five times as many calories as fat, muscle
loss slows your metabolism and can bring weight loss to a halt. The
best way to counter this is to increase your activity, most
importantly weight bearing activities that build and maintain
muscle, Such as weight training, Yoga, Pilates

As an example, if you lose weight by decreasing your calorie intake
alone, you might lose 25% of your muscle mass and 75% of your fat
mass. This muscle loss would slow down your metabolism
significantly making the fat loss slow down. On the other hand, if you lose weight through a decrease in calories along with strength building activities, you might lose a mere 5% muscle mass and 95% fat mass. This would cause
much less of a slow down of your metabolism.