“I go to the gym almost every day, but I still can’t seem to lose weight!” Part 2

“I go to the gym almost every day, but I still can’t seem to lose weight!”  I hear this a lot from when clients first come to see me and just people I chat with in general.  I am sure there are many of you that have experienced this frustration.  I often follow up with some key questions that make it pretty clear what may be going on. 

Here are some key things I ask or that you can look at yourself to determine why you may not be seeing the results you are looking for.  I will divide this article in several parts over the next few days.  Here is part two:

What does your workout routine look like - importance of weight training

Ok so you are going to the gym 3, 4, 5, 6 times a week…but what are you doing at the gym? When I ask this, I so often hear (especially from women), the endless amount of cardio they do.  Well here is some news for you, in order to burn fat, and especially to tone up you must incorporate weight training into your workouts.  Don’t get me wrong, cardio is fine (when done the right way, and at the right time – yes type of cardio and timing does matter), however the thing about cardio is that you are only burning calories while you are actually doing that cardio workout.

Weight training on the other hard allows you to burn calories not only while you are lifting weights but also even when you are no longer working out.  The more lean muscle you put on your body, the more calories you will burn.  Basically for every pound of lean muscle you put on, you will burn an additional 50 calories a day at rest (yes even while sleeping!) Remember also that muscle takes up a lot less space than fat, so putting on muscle will make you look leaner, smaller, while speeding up your metabolism to keep burning fat!  So taking that extra 10 lbs of fat and turning it into muscle will make you drop your size, and you will burn 500 calories more a day (that’s 3500 calories a week, which is also equal to one pound of fat loss). 

Next time you go to the gym, take a look around and see who is doing cardio and who is doing weights.  You will see that more fit/leaner people are the ones doing the weight training (especially take a look at the really fit women), and usually the ones with extra weight are on the cardio machines, day after day.  Don’t get me wrong, cardio is great and much needed as a complement to your workout program, but doing only cardio will not get you the shapely fit lean body you desire. 

Tomorrow I will post an article about how to plan your weights and cardio routine for best results.  Stay tuned :)