Any woman who works out with weights will likely wax lyrical about it.

Weight-lifting brings tangible results and is hugely satisfying. It’s becoming increasingly popular amongst women, but many still fear they’ll soon resemble body-builders, rather than create the lean physique they desire.

Gradually, general consensus is shifting though, with more and more women trying resistance training - be that with weights or just their own bodies - and never looking back.

One female personal trainer even told The Independent she can eat eight times as much as she used to when doing purely cardio. But if that’s not incentive enough, we spoke to personal trainer Tom Mans to find out exactly why lifting weights is such a good idea for women.

1. Weight training is key to losing fat

“When it comes to fat loss, the single most important factor is making sure you burn off more calories than you consume on a day-to-day basis,” Mans explained to The Independent

By weight training, you build lean muscle, and muscle is a metabolically active tissue where carbohydrates and body fat are burned and used as energy. The more muscle you have, the higher your basal metabolic rate, so the more calories you’ll burn over the course of a day. 

2. It's more effective than cardio

Many people think slogging it out on a cardio machine or pounding the pavements are the keys to fat loss, but cardio like running or cycling puts strain on your muscles (which can lead to injuries) and won’t build muscle, according to Mans.

Plus with weight training, there are practically endless exercises you can do, so unlike with cardio you’ll never get bored.

3. Lifting weights doesn't mean you'll become big and bulky

“I completely understand why women think weight training makes you bulky and muscly,” says Mans, adding that it can make you bulky, but only if you do specific training with a strict diet to match.

Plus women are built differently to men, and Mans says we won’t become bulky because of our basic biology: “On average, testosterone levels in men are about seven to eight times as great as in women. And testosterone is the main hormone that builds muscles.”

4. It has a positive impact on bone density

“When our bones are put under stress from the force of resistance training over a long period of time, they grow stronger and increase in density to withstand the extra load and force,” Mans says.

“Resistance training increases bone density and therefore decreases the chances of women and men developing osteoporosis later on in life.”

Studies have shown that both aerobic exercise and resistance training help strengthen our bones’ ability to bear weight, but resistance training is more effective.

5.  It will improve your strength and boost your confidence

Every time your work out with weights, you become stronger, and so next time you’ll be able to lift more, which is both incredibly satisfying and motivating.

“Unlike fat loss, which takes a lot of time and patience, strength in the gym can increase on a week-by-week basis,” Mans says, “Especially in the first five to six months of training.”

Plus, it just feels awesome to feel strong: “My female clients get a massive confidence boost when they know they are can lift more than most men of the same age in the gym,” Mans says.

6. It makes you more athletic

Everyone wants to look toned and sculpted, and weight training is the way to achieve this. But it’ll also improve your abilities in other sports.

“I have trained a range of athletes in the past - from professional rugby players to tri-athletes to motorcycle racing drivers,” Mans says. “Having a solid strength base helps improve many other elements of athleticism, including power, speed, agility, endurance and muscle mass gains. 

“Strength training and weight training will help the body adapt to the forces it will face during sport and through everyday life.”

Weights machines can be daunting so put people off. But all you have to do is ask someone how to use them once, and then you’ll be good to go.

And if you don’t have access to a gym, it’s easy to find at-home resistance-based workouts using stretchy bands, dumbbells or even cans of beans (or bottles of alcohol, depending on your priorities).

Once you start working out with weights, chances are you’ll never look back. And then you’ll be one of the ones waxing lyrical (and smashing the men at arm-wrestling).

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/why-women-should-lift-weights-6-reasons-exercise-fitness-confidence-strength-fat-loss-a7829436.html

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WHY WE SHOULD REPLACE WEIGHT LOSS WITH FAT LOSS

We need to stop obsessing over losing weight, says Rachel Hosie - there are better ways to measure your fitness and health progress.

Hollywood star Kate Winslet says she hasn't weighed herself in more than 12 years - and several fitness experts have urged others to shun the scales too.

Talking about new movie The Mountain Between Us - in which co-star Idris Elba drags her from a stream - she says: "It was very hard on him. I don't know how much I weigh. I haven't weighed myself in 12 years. Top tip."

She hit the big time playing Rose in Titanic in 1997, and has been a size 10, 12, and 14 over the past two decades.

Many fitness experts urge people to improve their fitness and tone, rather than trying to lose weight, so Kate could be onto something.

Personal trainer to elite athletes and the stars, Rich Tidmarsh, told The Independent: “You shouldn’t be losing weight - ideally you want to keep your weight the same whilst getting smaller.”

If you’re trying to get healthier, you should be gaining muscle and losing fat, thus getting smaller but not necessarily lighter.

Muscle is more dense than fat, which is where the common adage “muscle weighs more than fat” comes from: a pound of fat takes up a lot more space than a pound of muscle.

“Muscle is three times as dense as fat (so you are heavier),” personal trainer Nicola Addison explained. 

“But the same weight of fat over muscle will take up 19 per cent more body space. That’s why we (and most fitness professionals) will recommend a measuring tape over the scales any day!”

The trouble is, we’ve been conditioned to obsess over the number on the scale.

However, according to fitness and nutrition expert Gav Gillibrand, the scale is the least effective tool for assessing your progress when it comes to losing body fat. 

He says it’s better to focus on three other factors:

1) Body dimensions and measurement

2) Body fat

3) Performance

“Anyone can restrict calories and ‘lose weight,’” he explained to The Independent. “On a crash diet, most of the weight loss comes from water and muscle.”

He believes that instead of looking at the number on the scale, we should be trying to improve our performance, such as by completing more reps or higher weights on a given exercise. 

“Focus on building muscle and becoming strong,” Gav says. “That combined with a high protein, good fats and low GI carbohydrate diet is the key to sustained body fat loss.”

But for decades, we’ve been obsessively talking about losing weight. We need to change the conversation.

“As the owner of a busy personal training company in London, one of the most common goals we have new clients asking us for is weight loss, but 99 times out of 100 what they’re really after is to change the shape of their body, for example, achieving a slimmer stomach or leaner thighs,” David Valentine-Jones, owner of Sculpt Fitness, told The Independent. 

We just need to retrain our brains to think about weight loss being the be all and end all.

As personal trainer Tom Mans points out, when people say they want to lose weight what they really mean is they want to lose fat. All we ever talk about it losing weight though. 

Tom accepts that very overweight or obese people will see the number on the scales go down once they start training, but for most people, your body weight “will probably stay the same, or not change drastically.

“With my own clients who want to get leaner and lose some fat I’ll do before and after photos,” he explained to The Independent. “This gives a better representation of whether they are losing fat.” 

What’s more, our weight fluctuates so much.

“The thing to remember about solely focusing on the scale to track results is that weight will naturally fluctuate up or down day to day depending on a number of factors, primarily water retention,” Jones explains. 

“This can potentially lead to a demoralising result for a person that has embarked on a quest to lose weight, exercised hard and eaten sensibly all week only to find they have put on a pound, most likely in water weight.”

Women also have the issue of their menstrual cycles affecting their weight.

But at the end of the day, working out shouldn’t just be about fat loss anyway - there are so many other benefits to exercise that go past aesthetics. 

“If you stay fit and healthy you will potentially live longer, lower your body pressure, increase bone density, decrease stress, boost confidence, improve your sleep and increase your appetite,” Mans explains. 

Keeping tabs on your weight isn’t necessarily a bad thing just to keep you in check - Jones says the best approach is to weigh yourself no more than once a week or a fortnight, at the same time of day and on the same scales - but we need to stop obsessing over weight loss. 

Fat loss and improved health are much better goals.

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/why-weight-loss-fat-replace-health-safe-gym-workout-scales-measurements-ratio-a7968451.html

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