Lose weight successfully: With strategy and strength training

If you train your muscles regularly and intensively, you are doing a lot of things right when it comes to weight management. The fact is: if you want to lose weight, you need to ensure a negative energy balance.

Your body needs energy 24 hours a day. This total daily energy expenditure is measured in kilojoules. How high the daily energy turnover is depends on both the basal metabolic rate and the power metabolic rate. The basal metabolic rate describes the amount of energy that your body needs at rest, on an empty stomach and at a room temperature of 28 degrees Celsius in order to maintain vital basic functions – such as heart rate, breathing, blood circulation, digestion and temperature. It depends on gender and age as well as body size and mass. As muscle mass makes up the largest proportion of body mass, its influence on energy consumption is decisive. Power metabolic rate, on the other hand, describes the amount of energy you generate through physical activity, i.e. it depends on how often and how intensively you are physically active. If you want to lose weight, you must generally ensure a negative energy balance. The energy balance describes the difference between energy intake and consumption. It is negative if you consume more energy each day than you take in. There are three strategies to achieve this.

Strategy 1: Reduce energy intake

To achieve a negative energy balance, you can reduce your energy intake. This forces your body to obtain the energy it needs by breaking down its own stores. The problem with such a conventional reduction diet is that you run the risk of your body using muscle mass instead of fat deposits to generate energy. The fatal consequence: the loss of muscle mass reduces your basal metabolic rate. And this is exactly what makes it so difficult to keep the weight off permanently after a diet. With a reduced energy metabolism, you may consume even less energy than before the diet. If you eat “normally” again, the yo-yo trap snaps shut and you put on weight. Adequate protein intake reduces the risk of losing muscle and bone mass.

Strategy 2: Increase energy consumption

Another strategy is to increase your energy consumption. Intensive strength training can sustainably increase your basal metabolic rate: with every workout, you stimulate the muscle building rate by up to 72 hours. Both require energy. In other words, you can use the effect of training and the additional muscle mass generated to increase your daily energy consumption.

It also makes sense to increase your energy expenditure through physical activity – for example by doing housework and gardening, walking briskly for half an hour a day, climbing stairs or doing sport. As a general rule, the more muscle mass you have and the more fully and intensively you use it during physical activity, the higher your total daily energy expenditure will be.

Strategy 3: Reduce energy intake and increase energy consumption

To achieve the maximum possible effect, it makes logical sense to combine strategies 1 and 2. Strength training – in combination with a protein-rich diet – is the most important measure to prevent the loss of lean body mass or to promote the build-up of muscle mass and thus ensure a high energy turnover in the long term.

Measurement of body composition

More muscle, that’s the goal. Bioelectrical impedance analysis, or BIA for short, provides you with visible results. The analysis system provides information about the distribution of your muscle and fat mass.