Why does lifting weights increase metabolism

One can consume a huge meal and gain no weight, while the other has to carefully count calories to not gain weight. Researchers have found some predictors of how fast a person's metabolism will be.

These include: the amount of lean muscle and fat tissue in the body, age, and genetics though researchers don't know why some families have higher or lower metabolic rates. Sex also matters, since women with any given body composition and age burn fewer calories than comparable men.

You can't easily measure your resting metabolic rate in a precise way there are some commercially available tests, but the best measurements come from research studies that use expensive equipment like a metabolic chamber.

But you can get a rough estimate of your resting metabolic rate by plugging some basic variables into online calculators like this one. It'll tell you how many calories you're expected to burn each day, and if you eat that many and your weight stays the same, it's probably correct. The effect happens gradually , even if you have the same amount of fat and muscle tissue. So when you're 60, you burn fewer calories at rest than when you're Jensen said this continual decline starts as young as age 18 — and why this happens is also another metabolism question researchers haven't answered.

There's a lot of hype around "speeding up your metabolism" and losing weight by exercising more to build muscle, eating different foods, or taking supplements. But it's a metabolism myth. While there are certain foods — like coffee, chili, and other spices — that may speed the basal metabolic rate up just a little, the change is so negligible and short-lived, it would never have an impact on your waistline, said Jensen.

Building more muscles, however, can be marginally more helpful. Here's why: One of the variables that affect your resting metabolic rate is the amount of lean muscle you have.

At any given weight, the more muscle on your body, and the less fat, the higher your metabolic rate. That's because muscle uses a lot more energy than fat while at rest see the graphic in section one. So the logic is if you can build up your muscle, and reduce your body fat, you'll have a higher resting metabolism and more quickly burn the fuel in your body. Jensen also noted that it's difficult for people to sustain the workouts required to keep the muscle mass they gained.

Overall, he said, "There's not any part of the resting metabolism that you have a huge amount of control over. The control tends to be relatively modest, and unfortunately, it also tends to be on the downside. While it's extremely hard to speed the metabolic rate up, researchers have found there are things people do can slow it down — like drastic weight loss programs. For years, researchers have been documenting a phenomenon called "metabolic adaptation" or "adaptive thermogenesis": As people lose weight, their basal metabolic rate — the energy used for basic functioning when the body is at rest — actually slows down to a greater degree than would be expected from the weight loss.

To be clear: It makes sense that losing weight will slow down the metabolism a bit, since slimming down generally involves muscle loss, and the body is then smaller and doesn't have to work as hard every minute to keep running. But the slowdown after weight loss, researchers have found, often appears to be substantially greater than makes sense for a person's new body size.

In the newest scientific study to document this phenomenon, published in the journal Obesity , researchers at NIH followed up with contestants from season eight of the reality TV show The Biggest Loser. By the end of the show, all of the participants had lost dozens of pounds, so they were the perfect study subjects to find out what happens when you lose a dramatic amount of weight in a short period of time. The researchers took a number of measurements — bodyweight, fat, metabolism, hormones — at both the end of the week competition in and again, six years later, in Though all the contestants lost dozens of pounds through diet and exercise at the end of the show, six years later, their waistlines had largely rebounded.

Some research estimates that you may burn about calories in 30 minutes of either cardio or HIIT if you weigh about pounds 73 kg One of the potential benefits of HIIT is that you can spend less time actually exercising, since rest periods are included between the intense periods of activity.

Some research shows it may burn more calories than weights or cardio. Overall, it can produce similar weight loss to cardio, but with less time spent exercising. It has published evidence-based recommendations for weight loss Overall, the ACSM states that less than minutes per week of moderate or vigorous physical activity like cardio is probably not enough for weight loss. However, it states that more than minutes per week of this type of physical activity is sufficient to help produce weight loss in most people.

In addition, research shows that people tend to lose more body weight when they have higher levels of physical activity If your muscle and fat change by the same amount, the scale may stay the same, even though you got healthier. One large study in overweight or obese adults helps put everything into perspective regarding exercise and weight loss. Participants were divided into three exercise groups: cardio, weights or cardio plus weights Overall, the cardio-plus-weights group had the best body composition changes.

They lost weight and fat, while also gaining muscle. This means that a program that combines cardio and weights may be best for improving your body composition. Summary: Cardio is more effective than weight training at decreasing body fat if you do more than minutes per week. Weight training is better than cardio for building muscle. A combination of cardio and weights may be best for improving your body composition. Most people know that exercise and a healthy diet are essential for optimal health.

According to a study published in October in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research , just 30 minutes twice a week of high intensity resistance and impact training was shown to improve functional performance, as well as bone density, structure, and strength in postmenopausal women with low bone mass — and it had no negative effects.

With both aerobic activity and strength training, your body continues to burn calories after strength training as it returns to its more restful state in terms of energy exerted. You may even be able to further reduce body fat specifically when strength training is combined with reducing calories through diet. People who followed a combined full-body resistance training and diet over the course of four months reduced their fat mass while improving lean muscle mass better than either resistance training or dieting alone, concluded a small study published in January in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism.

Strength training also benefits your balance, coordination, and posture, according to past research. One review, published in Aging Clinical and Experimental Research in November , concluded that doing at least one resistance training session per week — performed alone or in a program with multiple different types of workouts — produced up to a 37 percent increase in muscle strength, a 7. Studies have documented that strength training can also help ease symptoms in people with many chronic conditions, including neuromuscular disorders, HIV , chronic obstructive pulmonary disease , and some cancers, among others.

For the more than 30 million Americans with type 2 diabetes, strength training along with other healthy lifestyle changes can help improve glucose control, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a study published in June in Diabetes Therapy.

And research published in in Frontiers in Psychology suggested regular resistance training can also help prevent chronic mobility problems, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. Strength training has been found to be a legitimate treatment option or add-on treatment to quell symptoms of depression , according to a meta-analysis of 33 clinical trials published in JAMA Psychiatry in June And there's evidence strength training may help you sleep better, too, according to a study published in the January—February issue of Brazilian Journal of Psychology.

Along with aerobic exercise, muscle-strengthening activities helps improve blood pressure and reduce risk of hypertension and heart disease, according to HHS.

Editorial Sources and Fact-Checking. Strength and Resistance Training Exercise. American Heart Association. April 19, Clinical Definition of Sarcopenia. Clinical Cases in Mineral and Bone Density. September—December Department of Health and Human Services. While you are performing resistance training, you are expending additional calories, thereby increasing your caloric burn, or metabolism, for that given day. After you complete your strength training workout, for the next 24 - 48 hours, your body will have to work harder than normal in order to repair the muscle tissues that have had stress imposed on them.

As your body is recovering from your most recent strength training workout, you are burning more calories. Finally, performing resistance training will help increase your metabolism because it promotes an increase in lean body mass or muscle tissue.