Originally published August 6 2005
Weight lifting is not associated with weight loss, says study
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A new study punches holes in an old theory, stating that weight lifting can help you lose weight.
"Even if weight training increases muscle and metabolism, there is little evidence showing that it is enough to cause weight loss," said Joseph Donnelly, the director of the Energy Balance Laboratory at the University of Kansas, who has extensively reviewed studies on the link between resistance training and weight loss.
They lift too light a weight, or they neglect to progress to heavier weights as they grow stronger.
And often, women who take up weight lifting also diet.
In fact, it is nearly impossible to increase muscle while cutting calories.
A Google search using the terms "metabolism" and "weights" produces thousands of Web sites, many of which say that anyone can lose weight and build muscle through strength training, even doing routines that aren't particularly strenuous.
Books like Kathy Smith's "Lift Weights to Lose Weight" also perpetuate the myth that building muscle supercharges metabolism and quickly leads to weight loss.
In "Smart Girls Do Dumbbells," Judith Sherman-Wolin claims that resistance-training can "melt away those stubborn pounds you've been trying to lose all your life."
Before taking up weight lifting, she had already lost 15 pounds in about three months by cutting calories and walking and running for an hour three times a week.
Lifting weights burns few calories --- "at least the way the average nonathlete does it and certainly the way most women tend to do it, using relatively low weights and few sets," Donnelly said.
Studies show that even women who do what it takes to get stronger develop only two to four pounds of muscle after six months of progressive lifting.
Researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst looked at almost 600 men and women who did a strenuous, progressive resistance routine for three months, according to a study in this month's Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.
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