Increased Muscle Mass and Decreased Body Fat

Through strength training, muscles get larger, or hypertrophy. This increased muscle mass has many advantages for women. First of all, it gives women a sexy, sculpted, and tight body like that of an elite athlete, instead of the skinny, scrawny, and starved body of a runway model. Second, increased muscular size leads to increased muscular strength. Third, the more muscle you have on your body, the higher your metabolic rate. The higher your metabolic rate, the more calories you burn throughout the day. Muscle itself is highly metabolic — it requires a lot of calories not only to function, but also to merely exist. That's why it seems as if men can eat anything that they want to and never gain an ounce, whereas we are counting the calories in our carrot sticks in fear that they may turn up on our thighs later in the day.

Women often carry on long bouts of cardiovascular endurance exercise in the hope of burning calories and subsequently losing fat. The truth, however, is that cardiovascular endurance exercise alone does not selectively burn fat off of your body. People probably got the idea that cardio burned fat because in the case of highly trained endurance athletes who do one- or two-hour endurance workouts on a regular basis, the body uses fat as a primary fuel source. This process doesn't necessarily happen for those of us who are not highly trained or who don't engage in regular, steady endurance activities longer than 60 to 90 minutes. Slow, steady cardiovascular endurance exercise can burn a certain number of calories per session, but those calories mostly (especially for exercise lasting less than an hour) come from carbohydrate sources and not fat.

It doesn't really matter what source the calorie comes from, because a calorie is just a calorie and the burning of fuel sources mixes and varies. You can't tell your body that you want to burn only fat, just as you can't tell your body to reduce only the fat on your thighs. If that were the case, every woman on the stair machine would have legs of steel. So how does strength training help to decrease body fat? Since a calorie is just a calorie, the more calories you burn, the more likely you are to lose body fat. And guess what? Strength training is a high-intensity exercise that requires a ton of calories. Also, don't forget that when you strength train regularly you increase your muscle mass, which increases your metabolism, leading to more calorie burning throughout the day.