Will Strength Training Help Me Lose Weight?

The short answer is, yes.

Cardio intense training is still effective to burn fat from your body, but adding strength training to your routine will compound and accelerate the progress.

There's a few reasons for this, of course, backed by scientific studies.

Muscle mass increases metabolism rates. Muscle is more efficient at burning calories and can even continue to burn calories for up to 72 hours after a workout.₁

Plus, when you lose weight, you don't lose pure fat. You lose a combination of fat and muscle. By strength training, you preserve your muscle mass, which allows you to lose more fat mass.₂

Strength Training paired with a caloric deficit balanced diet showed higher weight loss than a cardio aerobic routine alone, in 2022 study. Basically eating a healthy, appropriate amount of calories as well as strength training can yield better weight management results than a cardio heavy workout routine alone. There's a few ways to create a calorie deficit:

1. eating fewer calories per day than your body needs
2. burning more calories through exercise than you consume
3. a combination of eating fewer calories and increasing physical activity (in our opinion, the ideal method)

Calorie deficient does not mean starving yourself of food. Food is fuel that your body needs in order to function optimally, so it's important to eat a healthy well balanced diet.

It's important to know that when you are adding strength training to your workout regime with a weight management goal in mind, you may not see a change with the number on your scale as much as you would expect.

Muscle is denser than fat, which means that the more muscle you add, the less quickly the number on your scale will drop. We find it best to work with measurements of your body when working with a weight management goal - or a favorite pair of jeans you want to fit back into.