Last week a prospective member of our gym mentioned (when she first walked in) that she was planning to start walking or jogging only, about three times per week until she “raised her metabolism and lost the fat” and then she’d start doing weights to “tone up”, and asked if I thought this was a good idea.

Now I believe that any activity is a great idea – and I encourage people to be as active as possible. But I’ll confess it had been a while since I’d heard this idea of doing aerobics first and then strength training once you’d lost the fat.

So is this a good approach? Let’s take a look …

Hunter et al
Resistance Training Conserves Fat-free Mass and Resting Energy Expenditure Following Weight Loss.
Obesity (Silver Spring). 2008

This study compared three groups:

Diet only, Diet plus aerobic training and aDiet plus resistance training group to determine what effect diet-induced weight loss in combination with exercise training has on body composition and resting energy expenditure.

With similar weight loss – the results showed that only the resistance training group maintained their lean mass and resting energy expenditure (metabolism). The aerobic training and diet only group actually lost muscle and lowered their metabolism. In other words – the strength training group lost more fat and maintained metabolism – meaning that if the program continued for a longer period of time or a greater weight loss, they could continue to lose more fat than the other groups.

And lets’ review a couple of older studies:

Byrne et al
The effects of a 20-week exercise training program on resting metabolic rate in previously sedentary, moderately obese women.
Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2001 Mar

This study compared two groups – Resistance training and aerobic training (walking). The resistance training group increased metabolism while the walking group actually reduced their metabolism)

Bryner et al.Effects of resistance vs. aerobic training combined with an 800 calorie liquid diet on lean body mass and resting metabolic rate.
J Am Coll Nutr. 1999 Apr;18(2):115-21.

The resistance training group lost significantly more fat and did not lose any lean muscle, even at only 800 calories per day. Additionally, the resistance training group actually increased metabolism compared to the aerobic group which decreased metabolism.

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Kramer, Volek et al.
Influence of exercise training on physiological and performance changes with weight loss in men.
Med. Sci. Sports Exerc., Vol. 31, No. 9, 1999.

Overweight Subjects were assigned to three groups: Diet Only, Diet plus aerobics, Diet plus aerobics plus weights

The Diet-only group lost 14.6 lbs of fat in 12 weeks but when they added in the aerobic program – that group lost only one more pound than the diet group (training was 3 times a week starting at 30 mins and progressing to 3 x 50 minutes over the 12 weeks).

However the Weight Training group lost 21.1lbs of fat (44% and 35% more than diet and aerobic only groups respectively) in the same time frame.

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It looks like this lady had been fed some inaccurate information. I told her that if her goal is to change the way her body looks – she needs to adjust her diet, and add strength training. Muscle is metabolically active. If you make it work – you burn calories. If you build some more muscle – you burn some more calories.

So if your goal is to increase your metabolism and lose the fat – and you had to choose between strength training or cardio – you need to add strength training to your program FIRST!

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AC

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