Are you looking for a way to improve your overall health and fitness? Do you want to know the best way to achieve lasting fat loss while preserving muscle?

In today’s episode of the Fitness Simplified podcast, your host, Fitness & Nutrition Specialist Coach Brooke Davis, dives into the benefits of resistance training. From improving body composition to supporting cardiovascular health, there are countless reasons why incorporating resistance training into your fitness routine is essential.

Tune in now and learn more about the science behind resistance training and how it can help you reach your health goals and help you with lasting fat loss.

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Welcome to Fitness Simplified Podcast

Welcome to the Fitness Simplified podcast. I’m Brooke Davis, Women’s Functional Nutritionist and Fitness Specialist with Elysian Women’s Wellness, and I’m here to simplify your fitness. Today’s episode is a solo episode. It’s where I dive into the most underrated thing that people can do for their health and wellness, some studies behind it, and how you can get started.

Let’s go! We all know we should exercise, right? Did you know that it’s underestimated that a whopping five million deaths from non-communicable diseases could be prevented if we simply established healthy exercise routines as a country in the United States? Also, people who make even small steps to healthier behaviors actually reduce their risk factors, and it actually leads to greater change in other healthy behaviors as well as improved overall fitness? For example, for somebody trying to drink a little bit more water or get their steps in on the weekend, things like that make you more aware of the rest of your life and some of those other habits. But we’re not just talking about fat loss here. We are talking about improved hormonal balance, cholesterol, and inflammatory markers.

The Surprising Truth About Weight Loss, Exercise, and Lasting Fat Loss

We’re talking about life expectancy measurements. Only 29% of adults meet the minimum recommendation for weekly strength training. Surprisingly, that’s actually up to 51% when it comes to recommendations of cardiovascular training.

But what are 71% of people missing out on? A meta-analysis was done comparing diet, exercise, or diet plus exercise, including resistance training and endurance training. These were separately analyzed to find out which was actually more effective, improving overall health markers, not just body composition. So, spoiler, resistance training won the study.

The Benefits of Resistance Training For Lasting Fat Loss

Not just resistance training though. I’m always stressing the importance of pushing yourself and making it hard. Knowing that the little pink three-pound dumbbells are not what’s going to get you the results that you want. It’s based on these studies are showing that it’s not going to get you the health changes that you want either.

Okay, so we want greater than or equal to 75% of your one rep max. So, greater than or equal to 75% of the heaviest weight that you could lift. You’re looking at a 75% or more difficulty rate of the max weight you can lift, which is not three pounds.

Long-Term Success For Lasting Fat Loss

A training volume of two to four sets and six to 10 reps “elicited greater effectiveness at inducing changes to body compositions. Insulin levels, blood lipids, and cytokines,” which are inflammatory markers. When you pair this with a hypochloric diet or a calorie deficit. A diet, as most people say that call it, resistance training, showed the greatest improvement in blood lipid levels, hormone levels, adipokine and cytokine levels. All of which are inflammatory markers, and the greatest reduction in fat mass. Okay, along with greatest preservation of muscle mass.

And this, my friends, is the number one determining factor of long-term success and keeping the weight off. Over 95% of people who lose 10% or more of their body weight will gain it back. The reason is that they lose their muscle mass, and the body is designed to maintain its muscles.

Hyperphagia Kicking In

And so, what it will do is it will gain weight back, it will make you hungry. It’s called hyperphagia. And even after four weeks post diet, four to eight weeks post diet, hyperphagia kicks in, making you hungry.

If you have not maintained your muscle mass, this will cause you to eat and, or want to eat at least. Then gain the weight back until your muscle mass returns to baseline, not your body weight. Unfortunately, because muscle mass takes longer and is harder to build. You’re going to gain the weight back plus some. Being able to reduce your body fat or your fat mass, along with preserving your muscle mass is going to be the best way to lose fat and keep it off.

The Synergistic Effects of Cardio and Resistance Training

Okay. So, the only thing that endurance training showed better improvement in was insulin sensitivity, even when in combination with resistance training and diet. So, this just speaks to the fact that a combination of both of these is going to be very important.

And we also know that muscle is actually beneficial to helping maintain healthy glucose levels as well. The combination of proper amounts of cardio and resistance training is going to be your best when it comes to diabetes or cardiovascular disease in that sense. So furthermore, a lower fat diet was actually less effective for fat loss when compared to a glycemically controlled diet or the high protein, low carb diet.

So, another study was done comparing fat loss in two different ways. One group was put strictly into a calorie deficit through nutrition. The other group was put into calorie deficit purely through cardio, which consisted of one hour of treadmill work at 80% of their capacity every day.

The Importance of Finding Your Maintenance Calories For Lasting Fat Loss

Tell me that doesn’t sound miserable. Okay. And there was zero strength training done.

They had spent the first two weeks of the study finding their maintenance so they could accurately measure the deficit. And this is why most people struggle to put themselves in a moderate deficit because they don’t take the time to find their maintenance. And without spending those two weeks in maintenance, you’re going to likely overshoot your calorie deficit.

So, I’m curious, which group do you think lost more weight, the cardio group or the diet group? Both the groups lost the same amount of weight. They lost about 16 pounds.

Okay. But we don’t want to just lose weight, right? We don’t care necessarily what the scale says if our clothes still aren’t fitting. So, the kicker is that the cardio group lost one and a half percent more body fat and maintained twice as much muscle mass as the diet only group.

So, this was a total of 4.8 pounds of muscle lost in the diet group versus only 2.2 in the cardio group.

The Muscle-Preserving Power of Resistance Training

Based on other studies, we know that resistance training is superior to cardio when it comes to maintaining muscle mass during a deficit, right? Which is what we found out in the other studies. So not to mention the reduction in BMR or your basal metabolic rate relative to that cardio, or sorry, the calorie decrease. So by just dieting and decreasing your calories, you’re actually decreasing your metabolic rate.

Whereas putting yourself in a deficit from exercise is going to mitigate that decrease in your metabolic rate. So this is just a really powerful reminder to anyone who isn’t using resistance training as a fat loss tool that you are not only losing more muscle mass than you need to, but you’re also reducing your metabolic rate. Both of which have negative effects on your ability to maintain your results, which is ultimately what we want for everyone.

Okay. But why is muscle mass so important? What exactly does it do for us? So, first of all, muscles are metabolically active tissue, which means that they actually require more energy or calories to function compared to fat. The more muscle you have over fat, the more calories you’re going to burn at rest, but especially during exercise.

The Metabolic Boost of Muscle Mass For Lasting Fat Loss

By increasing your muscle mass through resistance training, you’re actually boosting your resting metabolic rate. This increased metabolic rate helps your body burn more calories at rest, which contributes to efficient fat burning, better weight management, easier weight management.

So, in simple terms, the more muscle you have, the more fat you burn, even when you’re not exercising, but it doesn’t stop there. Building and maintaining muscle mass has a huge range of health benefits. For instance, having more muscle actually improves your insulin sensitivity, which is obviously crucial for regulating blood sugar levels.

This can reduce the risk of developing type two diabetes and also help manage existing conditions. Being diagnosed with diabetes is not an end all death sentence.

It is reversible. You can make these changes and can change your body composition.

You can change your eating and change the medication you’re on, and can change your diagnosis. So do not take that as gospel.

The Total Body Benefits of Muscle Mass

And if your doctor ever tells you that it’s not, find a new doctor. Additionally, adequate muscle mass actually supports your cardiovascular health by improving your circulation and reducing the risk of heart disease. Another advantage of having enough muscle is its impact on bone health.

As we age, especially as women, as our estrogen decreases past menopause, our bones become more vulnerable to osteoporosis, fractures, osteopenia, osteoporosis, fractures, breaks, right? So, one of the best things you can do for that outside of having quality diet is strength training. We know that strength training actually increases your bone density, but having muscle mass helps protect your joints as well as your bones and improves your balance, reducing your risk of falling and breaking the brittle bones underneath. Okay.

So really this is in turn, it creates a downstream effect of, you know, having better mobility, more functional independence, and ultimately a higher quality of life. As you get older, I don’t know about you guys, but I want to be the 70-year-old running triathlons. I don’t want to be the 70-year-old that is stuck on the couch or in a walker or, you know, in a home, God forbid, because I didn’t take the steps that I needed to take care of my body and my health.

So, while it is important, obviously, to focus on losing excess body fat to improve those health markers, doing so while neglecting muscle mass development can actually be counterproductive. So, losing weight without preserving or building muscle can actually lead to a higher proportion of fat in the body and lower metabolic rate, making it harder to sustain your fat loss. And I was going to save this maybe for another podcast.

The Importance of Muscle Preservation During Weight Loss

So, I’m going to just skim over this, but this is something that we are seeing major problems with when it comes to the weight loss shots like Ozempic or Wegovy, anything semi-glutide. And because it is not requiring any additional movement, anything like that, in order to lose the weight, what it’s doing is it’s just vastly restricting your calories to a very low amount. And with that, unfortunately, comes muscle loss.

So anytime there is fat loss without adequate protein intake, without resistance training, then you’re going to see muscle loss. And ultimately, the more weight that you lose without putting these preservation methods in place, the more you’re going to lose, the more muscle you’re going to lose, and the less likely you are to keep it off. And possibly, depending on how much it is and how much fat you had to lose, potentially the less healthy you are going to be at the end of it.

Not to mention the side effects of it all that we are seeing more and more of now that a larger population is taking and has access to these medications. So, saving this whole talk for another podcast because there’s so much to dive into here, but that is one of the implications with that medication. So, by prioritizing your muscle mass along with fat loss in any kind of program that you follow, you create a foundation for sustainable weight management and a healthier body composition.

The Importance of Muscle Mass for Overall Health and Longevity For Lasting Fat Loss

So not only is muscle mass important for aesthetics, but it also plays a huge role in your overall health, longevity, and your maintenance of that fat loss. It boosts your metabolism. It improves insulin sensitivity, supports your cardiovascular health, helps maintain strong bones.

So, when you are striving for a healthier body, a healthier life, remember to include, we want at least two to three days of strength training. Ideally, with those metrics that we talked about earlier, which is the two to four sets at six to 10 reps of 75% of your one rep max or more. However, that is something to work up to and get comfortable with.

So, making sure that you have proper form and making sure that you are doing this in a safe way is obviously important, but that is what you are aiming for. And then protein-wise, ideally, you want to get most people, I’m going to put out a broad spectrum here, are going to be fine with 120 to 150 grams of protein per day. And we can get into calculations like I did earlier with macronutrients.

Prioritizing Muscle Mass for Sustainable Weight Loss and Improved Quality of Life

So, you can go listen to that podcast if you want, but in general, if you are, again, taking the shots, you’re just trying to lose weight, you wanted to make it simple, shoot for 120 to 150 grams of protein. Most women are going to be fall within that range and that you are strength training. So those two things are going to be the best ways to create a sustainable fat loss and ultimately, again, improve the longevity of your body, of your bones, of your overall health.

Make sure to include those things alongside your fat loss efforts. Know that the scale is not the only thing that matters. And you know, by the end of your life, nobody’s going to care how much you weigh, but you are going to care how much you can move and what you’re capable of.

I have a Strength Training 101 Beginner Guide. It starts from foundational, but honestly, even if you are, I would say an intermediate lifter, then doing some strength training, you could probably benefit from this guide. It’s totally free.

I’m going to link it in the show notes, goes over starting with breathing and making sure that that foundation is set and then into form checks, form check videos, things like that, that you can watch as well as a basic program that you can follow and start to make progress with a basic well-balanced program. And that is for at home or gym. It is linked in the show notes if you need some starting point for strength training.

Have Any Questions About Lasting Fat Loss?

Thanks for joining me today. If you guys have any questions, comments, please drop them down and I would love to get back to you.

If you have any questions, suggestions for future topics, or just want to chat, feel free to reach out to us on Instagram @Brooke_Elysian and Facebook linked in the show notes or via our website, Elysianwomenswellness.com. And if you enjoyed what you heard today, we’d be thrilled if you could take a half second to leave us a five-star review. Not only will you be helping others find our show, but you’ll also be entered into our monthly hundred dollar giveaway for new reviews. New episodes drop every Monday, so make sure to hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more.

Thanks for listening. See you soon.

Coach Brooke Davis Links:

Website: elysianwomenswellness.com

LinkedIn: Brooke Davis

Facebook: Brooke Davis, CPT 

Instagram: Brooke Davis  (@brooke_elysian)

Free Community: Women’s Fitness Simplified: Lean down, tone up, build confidence!

Strength 101 Guide: https://elysianwomen.myflodesk.com/i0q61klkdb