Obesity Discussion Forums

[Evan]

so yea,

I used to lift weights in Highschool alot and had alot of fun I was wondering how benchpressing curling and other forms of weight lifting contributes to weightloss. Is it good for weightloss? not good at all? Id really like to getback into it but if it wont help with my weight loss Im gonna focus on other key excersizes first any impute is appreciated heh..


-Evan

[Obesity Discussion]

Weight lifting is very important for weight loss. Weight lifting does burn calories, which of course contributes towards weight loss. The biggest thing about weight lifting while trying to lose weight, is that when you are losing weight, your body will burn not only fat, but muscle as well! Weight lifting will help you maintain the muscle you already have!

[Evan]

thanks muchIm gonan try to get a gym membership soon and get on that

[Falcon]

Weight training is important. But just weight lifting by itself isn't going to do the job for you. You're going to need to get some cardio in there too. Walking, jogging, exercise bike, swimming, whatever you can do. At my heaviest I weighed more than you do now, so believe me it can be done. When I first started exercising, all I could do was just walk at a moderate pace, but it helped. Cut back on the calories and get in some cardio and you'll be amazed at how fast your weight will drop. I'm still working on getting that last 50 pounds off, but believe me I feel a thousand times better than I did when I started. Good luck!

[Obesity Discussion]

Originally Posted by Falcon

Weight training is important. But just weight lifting by itself isn't going to do the job for you. You're going to need to get some cardio in there too. Walking, jogging, exercise bike, swimming, whatever you can do. At my heaviest I weighed more than you do now, so believe me it can be done. When I first started exercising, all I could do was just walk at a moderate pace, but it helped. Cut back on the calories and get in some cardio and you'll be amazed at how fast your weight will drop. I'm still working on getting that last 50 pounds off, but believe me I feel a thousand times better than I did when I started. Good luck!

I couldn't agree more....cardio is sooo important. Not a good idea to skimp on that.

I will say that if Evan had a nice calorie deficit going, he could still lose weight without cardio but only weight lifting. Granted, by adding cardio, he could speed up his weight loss with all other things being equal. Also great for the heart.

[Steve]

This is from an interview I did with Lyle McDonald who is arguably one of the brightest guys in the fat loss industry. By far the brightest guy I've communicated with, which you can take for what it's worth.

Hopefully our readers have a solid understanding of who you are and what you bring to the table after that intro. I’d like to shift gears and talk about resistance training now. What used to be something only the big guys in the local gyms would do has become something most every health-conscious person is interested in. What would your advice look like in relation to the overweight/obese novice, keeping in mind most people reading this probably have 50-100 lbs to lose? How would you progress the person as their conditioning improved and they traveled closer and closer to their ideal weight? It’s common to hear things like, “heavy strength training preserves muscle.” Is that something this population needs to worry about? Why should or shouldn’t they consider resistance training? Yeah, I can hear you now, “Steve, I thought you said we were going to do this interview one question at a time. You just asked me 5 questions at once!”





LYLE: Everybody knows that asking lots of questions burns mad fat. Anyhow, when I originally got into this stuff, most of what I was reading was coming from the bodybuilding/athletic subculture, which is positively obsessed with avoiding muscle loss while dieting. This is ultimately because, and this is especially true for natural athletes, muscle loss tends to become very problematic when people are trying to get very lean. This is an issue I’ve dealt with to some degree in almost all of my books and for lean people who aren’t using drugs, it’s a huge problem. Sufficient protein, the proper kind of weight training, and a lot of other strategies are necessary to stave off muscle loss in this population.



Now, originally I tended to feel that the same attitude (all muscle loss MUST be avoided) had to apply to the obese but this turns out to not be completely correct. When people get fat, some of the weight gained is lean body mass (which encompasses not only muscle mass but also connective tissue and some other stuff); on average 25% of weight gained is LBM. To reach an ideal ‘weight’ (whatever that means exactly) often means sacrificing some of the LBM that was gained during the period where the person originally became obese. Many obesity researchers feel that allowing up to 25% of the total weight lost in the obese to be LBM is not only acceptable but may be necessary to get their weight down. Some even get more detailed by dividing LBM into inessential LBM (the connective tissue, minerals, etc) and essential LBM (muscle mass). Basically, they don’t think it’s that big of an issue for the most part and I don’t either.



Now add to that the fact that, the more fat someone is carrying, the less LBM/muscle mass they tend to lose under any condition in the first place. Whether it’s fasting, dieting, etc. the more fat someone has, the less LBM they tend to use and vice versa (leaner people tend to lose more LBM and less fat under any given condition). For example, even with total fasting, someone who is carrying a lot of fat may only lose 10% lean body mass; a lean individual could lose up to 33% of the total weight as LBM. Basically, the fatter individual doesn’t have to worry about it quite as much. So a lot of the obsession about getting fatter individuals into heavy training (especially muscle maintaining heavy weight training) may be both unnecessary and irrelevant. There is also the fact that extremely overweight/sedentary individuals are unlikely to have a large tolerance for exercise in the first place. I’ve had clients who couldn’t walk more than 5-10 minutes on a treadmill initially and anything outside of the simplest weight training (and I always used machines to avoid the coordination aspects of free weights) would have been impossible.



Tangentially: I read a lot of diet and weight loss related stuff and a current trend in the industry is a focus on bodyweight, high intensity circuit type stuff. Reading these manuals, I find it interesting that the models demonstrating the movements are always light and in-shape. I wonder if any of these trainers have ever tried doing this with someone who’s 350 pounds and has never exercised in their life. My hunch is that they haven’t or they’d know better than to try to suggest something so inherently stupid.



Now, this isn’t to say that fitness won’t or can’t improve fairly rapidly in these folks. But the reality is that, initially, the likelihood of significantly impacting on energy balance with exercise in the obese is a losing proposition. This has always been one of those great ironies, about the only people who can burn a ton of calories with activity are trained athletes; and they don’t usually need to lose weight.



Frankly, I think most overweight people would probably do better doing lighter, higher rep types of weight training in the first place. There’s a lot of research showing that some of the issues associated with obesity are muscles that are packed full of both carbohydrate and fat. Depleting those tends to increase how well the body burns fat during the day as well as giving a bigger ’sink’ for incoming calories to go into. The heavy stuff just isn’t needed for muscle mass maintenance and lighter stuff may be better tolerated and have more beneficial metabolic effects in the short-term. As well, it provides a base of training for when heavier stuff is brought in later on.



Of course, and this goes to, I dunno, your third question or something… as folks get leaner, the role of exercise (either to maintain a sufficient deficit or spare LBM) can begin to play a larger role. And, of course, if it was included at some level (and building basic fitness doesn’t take much training each week) from the outset and increased gradually and progressively the individual will be capable of handling a lot more training as they do lose weight (and need the exercise more) than if someone waits until they have already lost a bunch of weight to start but this is a minor quibble.







STEVE: It’s easy to hear something from an ‘expert’ and hold onto it without ever questioning it. That’s what I believe is happening right now, especially on the Internet forums, with regards to the need to lift heavy weights if you’re interested in keeping your muscle. I’ve seen a number of 300+ lb people with very high body fat percentages struggling to lose weight and worrying about squatting and deadlifting because the ‘true’ strength training is what preserves the muscles best.



Personally I’ve worked with an appreciable number of obese clients and I’ve always leaned toward the metabolic side of training opposed to heavy strength training. It’s nice to hear obesity experts and research support what I’ve found to be true empirically. It’s also reassuring to hear you’re on a similar page.





To summarize what you said here for our readers, think of weight lifting as a spectrum. On one end you have metabolic training (think high reps, relatively light weight, high volume, and low rest). On the opposite end you have neural training (think lower reps, relatively heavy weight, low volume, high rest).

Starting out, the obese individual, in most cases, would be better off starting on the metabolic side of the spectrum. As they progress in terms of body composition, work tolerance, coordination and body awareness, etc… they should also progress along the spectrum toward neural work.



The primary idea is to start out with the most energy (calorie) expensive (wasting) stuff since that’s the primary point of order in the initial stages. Lean body mass loss will occur and this is okay. Your goal should be to get yourself down to a more comfortable/healthy weight. As you progress though, learning and utilizing some true strength training methods will become integral for persuading where weight is lost from (fat vs. muscle.)



Is this a fair summary, Lyle?





LYLE: We might quibble over whether the average dieter or trainee should ever really bother with neural training. I’d be more inclined to say that they can move from more metabolic type weight training (goal: burning calories, depletion of glycogen/intramuscular triglyceride, etc) towards more typical ‘hypertrophy’ type training (for muscle mass maintenance and/or to shape specific areas of the body if desired). I wouldn’t take most average folks into very low rep ranges unless their goals started moving that way (powerlifting, etc.).





STEVE: And I would agree with that wholeheartedly. I should have clarified a bit more. I think very few average folk catch the ‘bug’ of powerlifting when venturing through their weight loss. I simply meant that they should start moving toward heavier, muscle preserving weight training. Usually somewhere in the middle of the spectrum is about right for most, in my experience.





LYLE: Agreed.

If you're interested... the full interview can be read here. And/or if you have any questions, let them fire.

[MichaelB]

Nice, Steve...thanks for sharing it.

[Steve]

You're welcome.

[monique]

It's reassuring to hear that lean body mass loss is maybe not as scary as people can make it sounds, and that most of us at very high weights will naturally lose mostly fat even without a lot of weight training. I am at that stage now of feeling like I need to start moving from limiting calories plus a little cardio, to adding MORE cardio and some resistance training. I'm still in the "working up motivation" stage but I'm not backsliding so I'm pretty confident I'll work something out.

~Monique

[Steve]

Originally Posted by monique

It's reassuring to hear that lean body mass loss is maybe not as scary as people can make it sounds,

Really only for those who are relatively lean trying to get leaner.

and that most of us at very high weights will naturally lose mostly fat even without a lot of weight training.

With the vast majority of my obese clients I do no true strength training. I do weight training, but it's more metabolic - meaning it's more a form of cardio if you will.

I am at that stage now of feeling like I need to start moving from limiting calories plus a little cardio, to adding MORE cardio and some resistance training. I'm still in the "working up motivation" stage but I'm not backsliding so I'm pretty confident I'll work something out.

Best to ya!

[sasacpt]

Weight Training can mean quite a few different things. Are you body building? Are you trying to maintain or are you trying to do endurance exercises with weights?? They could all be filed under weight training.

The original poster asked about doing the "body building" training to lose weight.

Most body building training, especially when it comes to weight lifting (without any cardio) is more concentrated on isolation movements. The original poster mentioned a few; bicep curls, tricep etc. Most of them are even done seated in order to burn the least amount of calories while achieving that "hypertrophy" stage.

One pound of muscle will burn anywhere from 15-50 calories daily (depending on activity level). Where as fat burns 6 flat. Muscle is responsible for a large amount of our metabolism and calorie expenditure.
Fat people do gain muscle, but its because they are supporting more weight.

Think about it this way. You put on a backpack that weighs 40 lbs and carry it around all day. Your body will adapt and you will gain muscle to support that weight and the central nervous system will figure out exactly what it needs to do to support it. There should be no question in this, its very simple. However, they also gaing a lot of fat, hence why they are obese. Unhealthy. That is another fact.

When it comes to being obese and weight lifting its not the best idea. At least not as a body builder. You need to undergo some Lean Body Mass loss in order to lose the fat. Clients that are obese need weight training but not to lose fat. Its to support their weight and to strenghten the core and legs. This sometimes is more essential than any kind of cardio or higher rep resistance or circuit training. It really depends on a person.

I would suggest you start doing some cardio, count those calories and figure out exactly what you need to eat and how much. Then use resistance training but more in a compound exercise type setting with circuit training involved. Do 3-5 or more exercises all in a row trying to hit as many muscle groups as possible (full body) take a minute, and repeat. Its a preffered way to fat loss today.

Just remember without proper nutrition you will be running in circles.