Aerobic sessions bearing no fruit? Weightlifting might be the answer to shedding all those excess fat…

A recent study found that women who combine aerobics with weight training burn more kilojoules - even after they've stopped exercising - than women who opt only for aerobics.

The reason: muscle's preferred source of fuel is fat, not carbohydrates.

The study compared women's metabolic levels - the rates at which they burn kilojoules - on days they sweated their way through aerobics workouts to days when they combined aerobics with weight training.

Higher metabolism
The winners in the kilojoule burn-off were those who went on to lift weights. Two hours after the women shouldered their last weight, they still had dramatically higher metabolic levels - burning up to 650 kilojoules in the two hours after exercising.

”Resistance exercise like weightlifting is cumulative. As you develop more muscle, you burn more calories. Your metabolism is still elevated up to two hours after you lift weights," says researcher Carol A. Binzen, a clinical exercise physiologist at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA".

Her study also suggested that although the body normally burns carbohydrates and fats equally, after resistance exercise, the body's preferred fuel is fat.

Binzen says the women who were part of her study were all normal women - "not super-fitness enthusiasts."

The regimen calls for 40 minutes of high-intensity aerobic exercise four days a week, followed by 40-minute weight-lifting sessions three days a week.

The weightlifting program includes three sets each of ten repetitions of chest presses, shoulder presses, leg extensions, leg presses, seated rows, latisimus dorsi pull-downs, biceps curls, triceps extensions and abdominal crunches, using either free weights or exercise machines. The women in the study also used enough weight that by the third repetition, they were at the point where they couldn't do another set.

Slow down ageing by lifting
Researchers believe a combination of aerobic and resistance exercise also hinders the onslaught of age.

"In the decade from 25 to 35, women can lose 20 percent of their muscle mass. And muscle mass is the metabolic furnace for women," says Binzen.

So ladies, lift those weights and feel the burn.

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