Can Lifting Weights Help You Lose Fat? Weights vs Cardio for Weight Loss

Yes. Lifting weights helps you lose fat because it keeps your muscle while you diet, so more of the weight you lose comes from fat. Cardio burns more calories during the session, but lifting decides what your body looks like at the end. For fat loss, lift three to five times a week, add cardio, and eat in a deficit.

Does lifting burn fat or only build muscle?

Both, indirectly. A lifting session burns calories, though usually fewer than the same time spent jogging. The bigger effect is what it protects. In a large trial with overweight adults, aerobic training lost more total body weight, but resistance training was the only group to add lean mass, and the combined group got the best body composition (Willis et al., 2012).

When you diet without lifting, a good share of what you lose can be muscle. You end up lighter but softer, weaker and with lower maintenance calories. That is what people call skinny fat.

Why is cardio alone not enough?

Cardio is useful. It is great for your heart and it adds to your calorie burn. The problem is when it is the only thing you do.

• It does not signal your body to keep or build muscle.
• Many people get hungrier and eat back the calories.
• Lots of running on top of poor movement and sitting all day leads to sore knees and hips.
• Fitness trackers often overestimate how much it burns.

And you cannot out-cardio a bad diet.

Does lifting keep burning calories after you finish?

A little. After hard exercise your body uses extra oxygen to recover. This is called EPOC, or excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. The size of it depends on how hard and long you train (Borsheim and Bahr, 2003). For normal training it adds tens of calories, not hundreds. It is a bonus, not the reason to lift.

How much extra do I burn from muscle?

About 6 calories per pound per day at rest (Wang et al., 2010). Add 10 pounds of muscle and you burn around 60 more calories a day. The real payoff is that muscle gives you shape, strength and more room to eat while staying lean.

Is there such a thing as “toning”?

No. The firm look people want means two things at once: building muscle and losing enough fat to see it. The lean, defined look, the goal of my Anti-Mom Bod and Anti-Dad Bod programs, comes from:

• Enough muscle to create shape and curves
• Low enough body fat to show it
• Training that builds muscle in the right places for your body type

How should I combine weights and cardio for fat loss?

This is the order I use:

1. Strength training 3 to 5 times a week. Compound lifts plus some isolation work.
2. Cardio 2 to 3 times a week. Mostly easy Zone 2, where you can still hold a conversation, and maybe one short interval session.
3. Daily walking for steps and recovery.
4. Nutrition: a moderate calorie deficit with high protein. See how to figure out your protein needs.

For more on the cardio side, read is steady state cardio worth it and will walking help me lose weight. If you want a plan built for your body type, take the XPL quiz.