By: Chris Gates

Hi, everybody! Welcome back to another edition of the Q&A series. This week, we’ve got an awesome topic to dive in to: lifting for weight loss.

Most weight-loss programs have a fitness element to them, and many fitness programs make claims that they’re the “optimal” way to burn fat and lose weight. But with so many claims across the board, and research all over the place on how to effectively lose weight, it can be hard to figure out what plan is going to work best for you.

As a coach part of my training philosophy for clients is that everyone should lift weights or do some type of resistance training. Recently I was asked why that’s the case, and I thought it presented a great opportunity to dive into why lifting weights is such a valuable piece to the overall fitness and nutrition puzzle.

So, let’s dive in!

Question: “I read your article about cardio being a more efficient way to burn calories than lifting weights. If that’s the case, why should I lift at all? My goal is to lose weight.“

To start, this is a great question.

It is true that cardio is a more time-efficient way to burn calories. I wrote an article about research that looks at the differences between lifting weights and cardiovascular exercise for calorie burn if you’d like to check it out.

But I want to start with this concept of burning calories to lose weight.

Yes, you need to be in a calorie deficit to lose weight. Yes, exercising can help get you into a calorie deficit.

However, viewing exercise as primarily a driver for calorie burn is a very dangerous frame of mind, for a few reasons.

For starters, we can dive into how many calories you actually burn during a workout session. For the average gym goer, it’s really not a lot. I don’t care what your Fitbit or Apple Watch or Whoop Band or any other wearable device says. I don’t care about what the cardio machine says, either.

These measurements are always wildly off. And by off, I mean overestimated. Check out this research out of Stanford if you want to learn a little more about how poorly these calorie counters track data (some of them were off by as much as 27 percent!).

Clearly, you can’t rely on that data. And you shouldn’t.

I’ve written about the one real way I think you can use these numbers and apply them to your training routine or bodyweight goals. It centers around using the “calories burned” metric as an indicator of effort. Give that link a try if you want to learn more.

As you can hopefully see, “calories burned” is really hard to nail down. With that being the case, why try and do it?

We’re not machines. We don’t get printout reports every day of errors, or issues, or performance, or anything else. All we can do is exercise, eat, and weigh ourselves to see what type of progress we’re making. There are simply too many factors involved to nail this down exactly.

The Mental Aspect

Another reason I see using exercise solely as a driver for calorie burn is that it’s mentally the wrong place to be in. I know that’s a difficult pill to swallow because we’ve been so conditioned over time by marketing, supplement companies, workout programs, etc. that “you gotta bust your ass to make gains,” or lose weight, or achieve whatever your goal is.

For a weight-loss goal, exercise is simply one piece to the puzzle.

If you only view it as a tool to burn calories, you’re missing out on all of the positive things exercise can do for you outside of your waistline measurement or what you see on the scale or in the mirror. Consistent exercise — this applies to both lifting weights and doing cardio — is going to benefit your overall health.

You know, the health you can’t see but it’s really damn important.

Let’s run through a bunch of benefits that you can’t see, but holy hell is it a big deal. Exercise, whether it’s lifting weights or cardio, can help…

• Lower your blood pressure
• Regulate your blood sugar
• Reduce chronic pain
• Help you sleep better
• Strengthen your immune system
• Improve your lung capacity
• Reduce the risk of several diseases
• Improve your mental health
• Improve your cardiovascular health
• Lower your risk for injury
• Improve flexibility and mobility
• Strengthen bone health
• Improve balance
• Provide for A LONGER LIFE EXPECTANCY

That last one gets all caps, because goodness gracious… exercise WILL HELP YOU LIVE LONGER!

I don’t care what your goal is, was, or will be. That’s what your primary goal should be! At the very least, these benefits should be part of what you focus on and value about your pursuit of a weight loss goal.

Nevertheless, the original question was asking specifically about weight loss in relation to the mode of physical fitness, so let’s finish it off.

Weight Training for Weight Loss

The final reason I think we should view exercise as more than a tool to burn calories is that your body acclimates to it over time. The amount of calories you burn today during a 2-mile run will be higher than that 2-mile run costs you in the future if you’re consistent with it. That’s one of the amazing things about the human body when it relates to fitness — it’s always learning, adapting, and in some cases growing.

You get more efficient at exercising the more you exercise.

So when we choose to lift one day, as opposed to doing cardio, the focus is much wider and larger than how many calories you’re burning or whether or not that workout is going to result in a drop in scale weight.

Your total daily energy expenditure is made up primarily by non-exercise activities — things like the functions of your organs, the daily tasks and chores you do, breathing, digesting food, etc. This accounts for anywhere from 70-90 percent of your daily calorie burn, which means actual planned exercise is going to account for only a very small percentage of the calories you burn each day.

I share this information to show you that the mode of physical fitness is a small piece to the puzzle of your body burning calories, getting into a calorie deficit, and losing weight. Your habits and daily lifestyle are going to play a much bigger role in making progress and finding success.

So the approach, in my opinion, should be to create a well-rounded fitness routine that promotes health benefits both now and in the future so that the weight you lose can be weight you sustainably keep off over the long term.

A proper weight loss routine should have a mixture of both cardio and lifting weights so that you’re setting yourself up for long-term success. By nature, lifting weights in particular can benefit you both in the present and future.

Specifically, weight training can burn calories as well as build muscle. Building muscle over time increases your body’s metabolic rate, which means the more muscle you build the more calories you’ll naturally burn every day just by living, breathing, and going about your day.

Lifting weights can also help encourage your body to lose more weight from body fat and retain muscle mass throughout the dieting process. This means you have a good chance of not only burning fat, but also building muscle at the same time.

You can’t lose when you combine those benefits with that long list of bullet points above.

In Conclusion

I wanted to outline all of this to land on a final point: your nutrition should be your primary focus when pursuing a weight loss goal. You can sustainably lose weight without exercising. You can’t sustainably lose weight without improving your current diet.

That’s just how it goes. The most effective way to lose weight and keep it off is to change your nutritional habits. You need to eat primarily whole, nutritious foods and stay away from the high-processed, highly palatable choices that got you to the point of needing to lose weight.

There’s no amount of cardio you can do that will overpower that sleeve of Oreos you just crushed.

That’s such a sad truth, isn’t it?

There are 15 Oreos in a sleeve. Let’s say you chose the “healthy” route (please FEEL the sarcasm here with the word “healthy”) and didn’t get the double stuffed version. That sleeve of Oreos is still gonna run you 800 calories.

That’s right, you can down 800 calories in the span of 10-15 minutes and it will take you several days and multiple training sessions to burn off that 800-calorie binge.

So don’t do it.

Start with your nutrition, and consider exercise to be icing on the cake, or the cherry on top, or whatever you want it to be. And you can choose whatever you want to do!

As I mentioned before, my recommendation is to have a mixture of lifting weights and cardiovascular training for a well-rounded approach that promotes as many health benefits as possible.

Exercise can have an impact. By no means can, or should, this impact outweigh your overall nutrition and daily habits.

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I hope you enjoyed this Q&A and found this article helpful! This was probably my favorite in the Q&A series so far. If you’re interested in learning more about this topic, or getting coaching to help you make the right choices when it comes to cardio, weight lifting, nutrition and your goals, please check out my coaching page and contact me so we can discuss more.

Thanks for reading!

CGF