Step 7: Rev Up the Metabolism. We have been taught that cardio burns fat; and it is true and should be part of anyone’s fitness program, but lifting weights burns fat too and for longer after the exercise is over. How is this so? I’ll explain.

Lifting weights primarily uses glucose (sugar) during the actual activity but your body naturally shifts to burning fat in between exercises. So you burn calories while you recover primarily from fat stores. Up to 90%! The second way lifting weights helps you burn more fat is through intermediate recovery. That is the time after a workout is over while your body is trying to get back to homeostasis (balance). We know that lifting weights causes minor damage to our muscle cells and that repair to those cells requires calories to be burned. Since we burn between 70% and 80% of our daily calories from fat, we automatically burn more fat after a weight training workout.

Finally, lifting weights helps us burn up glucose stored as glycogen in our muscle cells. Muscle glycogen has to be burned by the muscle it is stored in. It cannot be broken down and reenter the bloodstream. It has to be burned in that muscle cell. How does this help? Insulin resistance is the result of our muscle cells being constantly full of stored energy – glucose. This leads to accelerated fat gain. Once a muscle cell is full or only needs a small amount of glucose to be full again, the cell begins to reject insulin at its receptors leading to the spill over effect of sugar to fat. By exercising and using glucose stored in the very muscle you are working, your muscles need the glucose you eat to refuel your cells. This helps the body not to become insulin resistant and become fat. Lifting weights has so many more benefits than we have time to go over here, but trust me on this one you need to add weights to your workout and just watch what happens!

Action Step 7 – Go to YouTube and look up weight lifting exercises. There are so many options at your disposal. At times I am asked what I recommend, I usually defer to the experts here. Google weightlifting ideas and there are more websites dedicated to this than you can imagine. Perhaps hiring a personal trainer is an option for you. Just remember that by choosing to lift weights, you accelerate your success several times over. The next step is very important so look for the next blog soon. You absolutely need this step. You are have already changed so much, this one will be easy.