Weightlifting burns calories, boosts metabolism, and promotes fat burning—and not just during the workout. Thanks to the afterburn effect, strength training burns calories during the workout and ensures your body continues to burn fat long afterward. While cardio is often praised for calorie burning, strength training builds muscle, boosts metabolism, and creates long-term fat-burning potential. Whether your goal is to lose weight, build muscle, or both, understanding how weightlifting impacts your calorie expenditure is key to maximizing your fitness results.
How many calories do you burn when lifting weights?
The Centers for Disease Control It's estimated that an hour of weightlifting burns about 220 calories for an average person weighing 70 kg. However, this depends on your weight: people who weigh more burn more calories, and those who weigh less burn fewer. To compare weightlifting to cardio: a person weighing 70 kg would burn about 370 calories during an hour of cardio.
Afterburn effect in weightlifting
However, weightlifting offers additional calorie-burning benefits not seen in cardio training. This is because weightlifting leads to a high post-workout oxygen consumption (EPOC). EPOC means that your body continues to burn calories even after your strength training session has ended, as it repairs and rebuilds your muscles. Studies suggest thisthat this can be the case 12 to 24 hours or longer after the end of the training.
What factors influence calorie consumption during weightlifting?
Let's look at the factors that influence how many calories you burn when lifting weights.
body weight
Naturally, people who weigh more burn more calories than people who weigh less. This is because more mass, whether bone, muscle, fat, or internal organs, requires more energy to move.
If you lose weight, you may burn fewer calories. Therefore, increasing your weights, increasing your sets or repetitions, or incorporating more challenging exercises into your workout will help you continue to burn more calories over time.
Old
As we age, we naturally lose muscle mass, with the decline after age 30 being about 3 to 8% per decade. After age 60, this decline accelerates. This means that older people burn fewer calories than younger people of the same weight who follow an equivalent exercise program.
The good news is that older people can compensate for some of this muscle loss through strength training or resistance training.
Gender
People born male tend to burn more calories than women, primarily because men are naturally taller and have more muscle mass. However, hormones can also play a role, as men have a higher basal metabolic rate (BMR) due to the male hormone testosterone, resulting in higher calorie expenditure.This means that women who want to burn the same number of calories as men need more strength training to achieve this.
Training intensity
The type of exercises you perform, how quickly you perform them, and how much weight you lift also affect your calorie consumption.
However, don't simply opt for heavier weights to burn more calories, especially if you don't have much training experience. This isn't an effective way to get your body used to weights and can lead to injuries. Instead, increase the weights gradually. As you build muscle, your body will gradually be able to handle more weight. With increasing muscle mass, your metabolism also increases. This, in turn, increases your ability to burn more calories.
Resting phases (metabolic conditioning)
Not only your body and the intensity of your training can influence your calorie consumption, but also the change in your rest phases through metabolic conditioning training plays a role.
This means that by strategically manipulating your rest periods, you can increase the intensity of your training, boost your metabolism, and burn more calories. Due to the EPOC effect, this can even last for hours afterward.
Simply shorten your rest periods to stimulate your body to perform better. This will increase your heart rate and oxygen consumption, allowing you to burn more fat during and after your workout.
Weightlifting vs. cardio for calorie burning
The combination of cardio and strength training is the best choice when it comes to burning calories. This is because cardio burns more calories per minute than strength training. Remember the 70 kg person who burned 220 calories in an hour of strength training, but 370 calories in an hour of walking? Other cardio comparisons include an hour of gardening, which burns approximately 330 calories, walking, and cycling, which burns 280 calories. Cycling is a low-impact sport that can easily be done in the gym, on the road, or at home on a stationary bike. Speediance Velonix can exercise.
Does this mean that cardio is better than weightlifting? Not at all. One reason is that these calorie figures don't account for the EPOC afterburn effect, which lasts well into the next day. Furthermore, progressive strength training is crucial for increasing muscle growth over time. Increased muscle growth is also important for increasing calorie expenditure over time.
This shows that a combination of various cardio exercises and strength training is the best choice. By combining cardio and strength training in your fat-burning workout plan, you can achieve better calorie expenditure, improved physical fitness, more strength, a more balanced physique, and a healthier body than with either method alone.
However, don't focus solely on calories, even if that's your primary goal in strength training. A balanced diet for muscle growth is essential for both strength training and calorie burning.
How to maximize calorie burn while weightlifting
Working with progressive overload
Progressive overload allows you to lose fat without losing muscle mass. Progressive overload means continuously increasing the weight, repetitions, or intensity of your workouts over time. This gradually builds strength and muscle mass while burning more calories. This is important because your body adapts to the activities you subject it to. Therefore, you need to keep pushing yourself to build muscle, which requires more energy and burns additional calories. Whether your goal is to burn fat or build muscle, progressive overload is essential.
Consume enough protein to ensure proper muscle growth. This will prevent you from burning too many calories at the expense of your muscles.
Compound exercises
Compound movements are essential for burning fat and building a defined physique. Instead of spending hours doing aerobics, you should focus on multi-joint exercises like squats, deadlifts, and bench presses. In short, compound movements activate more muscles and burn more calories.
Bodyweight exercises like push-ups, squats, and lunges are a good starting point. However, to achieve progressive overload, it is essential to combine these exercises with deadlifts, presses, and resistance exercises on machines such as the barbell. Speediance Gym Monster 2 to combine.
frequency
Many people believe that working out once or twice a week is enough to burn calories or get a toned body. However, this is far from the truth. If you're serious about strength training or burning calories, consistency is key. This means you need to train at least three to four times a week.
Frequent training boosts your metabolism and keeps it at a high level, thus avoiding the highs and lows associated with irregular training. It also stimulates continuous muscle growth, and the EPOC effect ensures that you continue to burn calories even on your rest days.
intensity
Intensity is also crucial for maximizing calorie burning. Heavier weights will build more muscle, but you should focus on high-intensity strength training to stimulate your body to burn fat more efficiently while preserving valuable muscle gains. For every kilogram of lean muscle mass you gain, you can consume and burn an additional 50 calories per day, even at rest.
Prioritize protein
Protein intake protects muscles during calorie restriction. If you're cutting calories to lose weight, you should reduce fats and sugars, but make sure you're getting enough protein. This is important because if your body doesn't get enough protein during workouts, weightlifting, and burning a lot of calories, it will break down your existing muscle to use it as fuel for your training. You don't want that.
How much protein do you need? While this varies from person to person, a general guideline is to aim for 0.8 to 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. Therefore, the person mentioned above, weighing 70 kg (154 lbs), should consume 123 to 154 grams of protein daily. This protein can come from meat or vegetarian sources; the body doesn't care which. What's important is that you consume a variety of sources. If you're vegan or vegetarian, the protein content of your meals will be lower, so make sure that every meal contains some protein.
Finally, it's important to remember that it's not just about how much protein you consume, but also when you consume it. You should aim to eat protein throughout the day so that amino acids are always available for muscle repair during and after your workout. If you find it difficult to consume enough protein throughout the day, try protein shakes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I lose weight simply by lifting weights?
Weight loss is possible solely through weightlifting, as it burns calories. However, the most effective training programs for weight loss, improving physical fitness, and promoting overall health typically include a combination of cardio and strength training.
Is it possible to build muscle and burn fat at the same time?
Yes, you can build muscle and burn fat at the same time. The key is sufficient protein intake during strength training. This allows your muscles to continue growing while you burn fat – killing two birds with one stone.
Weightlifting boosts metabolism, builds strength and burns calories
Weightlifting isn't just for building muscle; it's also an effective way to burn calories and lose fat in the long run. From the calorie burn during your workout to the extended afterburn effect, strength training helps you burn fat even at rest. Through complex movements, progressive overload, training intensity, and sufficient protein intake, you can effectively burn fat and build muscle simultaneously.
Do you want to improve your training even further? An intelligent home training system like the Speediance Gym Monster 2 offers guided strength training that allows you to become stronger and slimmer from the comfort of your own home.
