Most People associate weight loss with cardio work outs and weight lifting with increasing muscles. Unfortunately, this causes people to not reach their potential results when they don’t understand how weight lifting relates to weight loss.

Weight lifting can be a very effective method for losing weight, when you do it the right way. Weight lifting increases your metabolic rate in the short and long term. Immediately after a weight-lifting session your metabolic rate will increase. But weight lifting also helps you maintain lean muscle mass, which creates a permanent increase in your metabolism. Muscle burns more calories at rest than fat.

With cardio training, your metabolic rate will increase, but only for a short time during and after your workout.

Now, while cardio will definitely help you lose weight, weight lifting will help you lose body fat, so you are changing your body composition. When you lose weight with cardio, you don’t look different, just smaller, because you may have lost 10 or 20 pounds. This is because you still have the same proportion of muscle mass to body fat.

Through weight training the way you look will change, because you will have in a sense replaced fat with muscle. This makes you look healthy and fit. This is when people will say to you, “you look great, have you lost weight?”

Weight training for weight loss is a great alternative to cardio and will give you better, more visible results.

Choose weight lifting as an avenue for weight loss, and get help in designing a routine that is right for you from the personal trainers at Answer is Fitness.

National Women’s Health Week is an effort to raise awareness about manageable steps women can take to improve their health. The focus is on improving women's health and the importance of incorporating simple preventive and positive health behaviors into everyday life.

Women are the caregivers: for spouses, children and parents, and they often forget to focus on themselves. However, research has proven that when women take care of themselves, the health of the entire family improves.

Maintaining regular health checkups is one of 5 health habits that can improve women’s health. The others are physical activity, a healthy diet, not smoking and engaging in safe behavior.

For regular health appointments, a bone density scan is very important. Having healthy bones is important at any age, but as we age our bones get thinner. Healthy eating habits, regular cardio exercise and a strength training routine are imperative to healthy bones. Osteoporosis is a concern for women, as women are four times more likely to develop this disease than men. To limit the risks of Osteoporosis, women should definitely engage in weight-bearing exercises. Eating healthy and possibly taking calcium supplements also aids in prevention.

As the warmer weather approaches, many of you are wondering how to lose that winter weight. Losing weight isn't easy but if you know how much activity it takes to lose 1 lb, that information can start you down the path to lose the last 5lbs or even 10lbs. There’s a simple formula: burning more calories + eating fewer calories = weight loss. However, sometimes, it doesn’t seem so simple.

So how is it done? How much can you eat, and how much do you have to exercise? For every pound you want to lose, you need to eliminate, (not cut out altogether, just use up) 3,500 calories through eating less and working out; an even better plan would be a combination of the two. The good news though, is that your body burns energy every day just by running the systems it needs to stay alive, however, how many calories burned varies in each person. So really, cutting a few hundred calories through diet and exercise will be enough to put you in your summer clothes, bathing suit or smaller size.

If you think you are doing this, and you are not losing weight, you may be underestimating the number of calories you eat in a day. Start tracking your meals and calculate your calories burned working out using a pedometer or other fitness calorie tracking tool.

So what does this all mean? The recommendation is to cut your daily caloric intake to 1,500 calories per day--no less, since eating too little can throw off your metabolism and cause other problems. In order to lose sizes faster, increase your activity. You will burn more energy, in turn burning more calories. And, remember your weight training, muscle burns more calories than fat when at rest. Answer is Fitness is running a Fitcamp to help you lose your winter pounds. Call us for details.