A friend of mine, Tracy, came to me with a fitness-related question awhile back. She had just started taking yoga classes and wanted to know why going to yoga class twice a week for an hour seemed to be a much more effective weight-loss method than jogging 5 times a week for half an hour (her previous workout regimen).
I told her while the sauna-like heat and humidity had a little something to do with it (she was taking Bikram Yoga classes where the temperature of the room is set at a little over 100 degrees F), I had a sneaking suspicion the real reason why she was losing weight more rapidly taking yoga than jogging had to do with the asanas, or postures, that she was required to hold during the roughly hourlong class.
Assuming the various positions taught by the instructor and holding them for extended periods of time required flexibility, strength, and balance. Tracy, who didn’t care to lift weights in the gym (like many females, Tracy was worried about “bulking up” the way guys do; read my previous post for an explanation of why this shouldn’t ever be a cause for concern), had incorporated a bit of resistance training to her workout regimen without even realizing it.
Lifting your leg, holding it in the air, and resisting the pull of gravity is lifting weight. Your leg is the weight.
Tracy was building muscle and increasing her resting metabolic rate as a result. Even though she quit jogging entirely, Tracy still managed to lose weight and at a much faster rate!
Why do I bring this up?
Well, a team of researchers led by Kenneth Walsh, a professor of medicine at Boston University’s School Of Medicine, have proven in an experiment with genetically altered mice that muscle tissue formed as a result of resistance training helps increase metabolism and promotes the burning of fatty tissue.
Their findings, published in the February 2008 edition of Cell Metabolism, provide further proof of something I’ve been telling clients and friends (like Tracy) for some time now – lifting weights, incorporating some sort of resistance training, builds muscle and improves a person’s resting metabolic rate. The more lean muscle mass you have, the more calories you burn at rest (at rest, meaning when you’re not exercising).
Walsh and his team of researchers began by deactivating the gene responsible for muscle tissue growth in mice. The genetically altered mice were then fed a high-fat, high-sugar diet (junk food essentially), and after several weeks, all of the mice – you guessed it - had become really fat. Walsh and company then took one group of overweight mice and turned the gene back on. In just two weeks, the mice that were able to build muscle tissue had shed the excess weight without any increase in physical activity!
Lift weight. Lose weight. Plain and simple.
So if you’re looking to shed a few extra pounds, try incorporating a little bit of resistance training before or after hopping on the treadmill, and you’ll really begin to see some results!
Tags: Asana, Bikram Yoga, Lift Weight Lose Weight
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