Negosentro|You’ll see more women in the gym doing cardio training than lifting weights. Their attitude towards that seems rather rational – they just want to lose some weight, but they’ll afraid that they’ll get bulky like bodybuilders if they start lifting weights. What they’ve heard from other people is pure disinformation and simply not possible. Also, people aren’t aware of all the benefits weight lifting has on their bodies, so they don’t even consider trying it. In the following paragraphs, you will find five benefits that might change your attitude towards weight lifting and hopefully motivate you to try it and see for yourself if it’s true or not.
Build strength
This is probably the most obvious benefit, but people usually associate it with only being able to lift more weights. On the contrary, the muscles you build in the gym will give you more strength for your daily chores – from carrying your groceries and kids to moving objects around the house. However, to get the necessary strength, you have to gradually start lifting heavier weights, as lighter ones only boost your endurance. Also, there’s a paper published in the JAMA Psychiatry journal that proves that weight lifting reduces the symptoms of depression. So it helps you build emotional strength as well.
Burn fat
If you have a healthy diet and lift weights, you’ll lose more weight than if you just go on a diet and eliminate certain foods. You’ll especially lose more intra-abdominal fat, meaning you’ll start losing belly fat. People who opt to only do cardio don’t know that they stop burning fat as soon as they’re done with their workout. On the other side, people who lift weights continue to burn fat for around 24 hours after their workout.
The reason for this is that your body needs the energy to activate your muscles, and most of that energy comes from fat. There’s a physiological effect called excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, which is in charge of keeping your body running and burning calories after the workout. It represents the amount of oxygen your body needs to restore itself to its normal functions. Your body expends around 5 calories of energy to consume 1 liter of oxygen – the more you work out, the more oxygen you’ll need afterward. Also, there is amazing protein powder for women who want to lose weight, tone up, or improve strength, so you can opt to combine it with weight lifting for amazing results.
Reduce injuries
Weight lifting provides dynamic loads on your joints, meaning it motivates changes in the bones, muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Bone density is increased when a load is placed on it, as it then goes through a phase of rebuilding, which makes it stronger. This reduces the possibility of bone injuries. Resistance training also helps with strengthening your muscles and tendons, while also increasing the flexibility of the ligaments. Seeing as how they are the support system of every joint, weight lifting will reduce the risk of injuries from complex and dynamic movements.
Keeps your heart healthy
There are two types of cholesterol in your body: HDL (high-density lipoprotein) and LDL (low-density lipoprotein). HDL is considered to be “good cholesterol”, as it guides cholesterol to your liver, which expels it from your body. LDL guides cholesterol to your arteries, where they accumulate, and cause them to narrow. This narrowing can cause some vascular diseases like heart attacks, strokes, and coronary artery diseases. There was a study done on 25 men, which proved that weight lifting increased the number of “good cholesterol”, and decreased the number of “bad cholesterol”. That’s how weight lifting can help you keep your heart healthy, as it decreases the chances of having a heart disease.
Improves glucose metabolism
There were some studies done on the effects of weight lifting on diabetes prevention, and the results are clear. This type of training doesn’t eliminate the need for insulin but it helps your body burn glucose for fuel, without additional insulin. The reason for this is that when you lift weights, your muscles get damaged, which enables the sugar in your bloodstream to enter the cells of your muscles to be used as fuel. Meaning, the more muscle you have, the more glucose your body will remove from the bloodstream.
Weight lifting offers many more benefits like improved posture, reduced back pain, enhanced mood, and reduced stress among others. Forget about the things you’ve heard from people who haven’t spent a day at the gym, and give it a chance. If you’re still skeptical, you can talk to someone from the closest gym and hear their experience about the impact weight lifting had on their life.
