Reasons you may want to incorporate strength training in your weight loss journey

1. Retain the Lean Mass you already have. Without weight training, your body will try to use all its energy stores in order to compensate for any calorie deficit. This means consuming both your excess fat and muscle. By weight training, it signals to your body that something in your environment means muscle must be a priority. So your body will target fat for weight loss. However, in extreme calorie deficits, your body will still consume much of its muscle.

2. Calories Burned. Most weight lifting sessions are somewhere around 20-60 minutes. That's 20-60 minutes of elevated heart rate and increased heat production. This increases your calorie burn over that time.

3. Improves strength and health. There is a very strong correlation between muscle mass and lower hazard ratio/improved Quality of Life. For myself, I find my joints behave better when under muscular tension when I'm working out regularly versus feeling loose when I'm not.

4. Increased Density. Muscle is about 15% denser than fat. This means you can carry the same weight of muscle as fat, in a more aesthetically pleasing way, in less volume.

5. Muscle has 3x the thermogenesis of fat. While fat consumes about 2 kcal/lb per day to heat itself, that same lb of muscle consumes 6 kcal/day. In other terms, for every lb of fat in your body you replace with muscle, your calorie consumption for that same pound just to keep existing at that same weight is 200% higher.

6. Gives the skin somewhere to fill out. Anyone who's lost substantial weight knows the battle of loose skin and stretch marks. By adding muscle, it reduces these "bat wings" to some degree preserving some of the more aesthetic appearance.

7. For the women, don't fear bulking. Many women fear weight training because they don't want to bulk up. First of all, women produce far less testosterone than men, so it is far more difficult for them to bulk up. Secondly, many men spend years in the gym trying to bulk up with only limited success. For women especially, you really have try in order to take on a more masculine appearance. Don't be afraid of the weights.

8. Tying everything together. If you can replace some 25 lbs of fat with muscle over say 3 years, you will look better, feel better, occupy less volume, and increase your weight loss due to the calorie burn of the activity, and increase your BMR by 100 kcal allowing you to consume more daily calories without putting additional weight on.

submitted by /u/CattleDogCurmudgeon
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