Give me a break. Give me a break. Break me off a piece of that Kit-Kat bar.
It’s been a lot. It’s been a lot lately.
I’ve been a lot lately.
Between stories about empathy being shown at my son’s Spring concert, a dead crossing guard, the loneliness that can accompany training and truck driver culture (okay, maybe that one wasn’t too bad) I’ve really been hammering you with some heavy topics.
Maybe it’s just me. My state of mind lately.
Ok, it’s definitely me. I mean, it’s not like you are requesting tear-jerking stories about my seemingly ordinary life. I’m just shoving them in your inbox the same way I try to shove my collection of roughly 12,000 Fort shirts into a single dresser drawer (which my wife is very unhappy about).
But, as the dated jingle that only a handful of you will even remember at the top of this post states, I want to give you a break.
Today we’ll just be talking about an honest-to-goodness fitness concept that may actually provide value. Which, as much as I’d love to just be a cross-legged sitting sage doling out eye-opening changing life advice, is ostensibly the reason you are here.
I want to talk about weight loss.
Or, perhaps more specifically, strength training’s role in weight loss.
There are four levels of thinking when it comes to strength training’s role in making the numbers on the scale drop and giving you a waistline slimmer than a slice of prosciutto that would make an Italian grandmother proud.
Level one is reserved for the person who has almost no idea of the basic principles of biology or physiology. This person thinks that going to the gym and lifting weights leads to an increase in calorie expenditure and, hence, leads to weight loss.
And while that is not entirely untrue, the amount of extra calories you burn from strength training is so negligible in the grand scheme of things it barely factors into your weekly caloric balance. Particularly considering most people strength train less than two hours per week.
Level two is for the smarty pants who has been training for a little while, listened to one Andrew Huberman podcast and knows, from personal experience, that strength training actually makes them hungrier, encourages them to eat more and, therefore, doesn’t play a role in weight loss at all.
Not completely invalid but also not the entire picture.
Level three is for the person who has read an outdated study in Muscle and Fitness that states that, for every pound of muscle you add you burn anywhere from 60 to 160 more calories per day and, therefore, strength training builds a larger internal engine that just chews through more calories.
And while it is true that bigger people with higher muscle mass tend to have higher metabolic rates, the number of additional calories a pound of muscle burns per day is closer to 6 than 60, it’s safe to say you would need to be a significantly more muscular person than you currently are in order to have that contribute to weight loss.
But what if I told you the real magic of strength training and weight loss had almost nothing to do with metabolism or calorie burn at all?
Welcome to level four. Which, congratulations, you are about to be a part of. Because the real benefit of strength training when it comes to weight loss (and, remember, we are only talking about weight loss here. Strength training has a host of benefits that are far superior than its role in weight loss.) is that it provides the mindset, motivation and discipline that will allow you to more meaningfully implement the weight loss strategies that really move the needle.
And this isn’t just about will power.
For sure there are plenty of people who “don’t want to waste the hours they spend inside the gym by eating crap outside of it”. And that is valuable. But the benefits go beyond the conscious level.
Strength training leads to a cascade of hormonal events that also influence your ability to maintain a nutrition strategy that help regulate appetite, improve insulin sensitivity, and make it easier to not dive headfirst into a sleeve of Oreos after a stressful Tuesday.
This is a complex and fascinating topic but given that the experts tell me that I am not supposed to write these posts above a 5th grade level, I won’t embarrass myself by trying to simplify the chemistry.
But it is real.
Adhering to a nutritional strategy and how that nutrition affects your body will alter when you engage in meaningful, consistent strength training. That is massive and is the real benefit of strength training on weight loss.
Now, I know you didn’t ask for it, but I can’t help myself. The real reason to strength train when it comes to body composition isn’t really weight loss (though it helps). Strength training leads to muscle mass gain which can really alter the shape of your body and the way that your body moves in a way that is appealing to the vast majority of people.
This isn’t about being remarkably or overly muscled. It doesn’t even have to be about an increase in muscle mass that is even visually perceptible. But an alteration of the ratio of muscle mass to body fat can yield more positive visual effects than just weight loss alone.
And if you go beyond vanity, strength training and muscle mass gain lead to performance improvements (whether that’s your weekly volleyball game or chasing your toddler around) and numerous health benefits. But even the level one people likely know this so I won’t dive too deeply.
So if the scale hasn’t budged but you’ve been logging your lifts and eating like someone who owns more Tupperware than plates — keep going. The real shift is already happening. You just might not see it yet. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t working.
And, catchy retro jingle aside, that Kit-Kat bar probably isn’t helping — though I fully support keeping one in your gym bag for emotional emergencies.
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