Does strength training increase metabolism

The answer is yes, but there have always been different opinions in the fitness and sports circles about how much weight can be lifted and how long it can last. It is far from being as exaggerated as the marketing slogan of "train once and lie down for three days to lose weight."

Everyone who has practiced strength knows this. For example, after the leg training combination of deadlifts and lunges last time, I went home at night and turned on the air conditioner at 26 degrees. I was still feeling hot all over. I even ate two boxes of iced blueberries without feeling cold. I looked through the records on my exercise bracelet and found that after the three hours of training, I burned almost 100 calories more than usual during the same time period while lying still. This is the excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) effect that is basically uncontroversial in academic circles. Generally, within 12 to 24 hours after medium-to-high-intensity strength training, the body's metabolism will be 15% to 30% higher than the resting level. Even the most conservative scholars who hold a conservative attitude towards strength training to increase metabolism recognize the existence of this short-term effect.

The controversy mainly focuses on the long-term improvement of resting metabolism. A popular saying in the fitness circle in the past few years is that 1 pound of muscle burns 6 more calories per day, while the same weight of fat only burns 2 calories. If you build 10 pounds of muscle, you can burn 60 more calories every day while lying down. You can easily lose five or six pounds in a year. However, new research data has come out in the past two years, saying that the resting consumption of muscles is actually not that high. Calculated, 10 pounds of muscle will burn an extra thirty or forty calories a day, which is not as much as the calories of half a cup of full-sugar milk tea. Therefore, many people think that this improvement is better than nothing, and it is better to keep their mouth shut.

In the past few years of teaching students, I have seen many intuitive examples. Two girls also lost weight from 130 pounds to 100 pounds. One only relied on running and dieting. After the weight loss, she ate half a piece of cheesecake and her weight jumped up the next day. She went to a physical testing station to measure her basal metabolic rate, which was less than 1100 calories. The other one used jogging and strength training three times a week. When she reduced to 100 pounds, her basal metabolism was still 1280. She ate hot pot with friends on weekends, and her weight did not fluctuate the next day. The 180 kcal difference is actually the difference in muscle mass between the two people - the former lost almost 6 kilograms of muscle through dieting and pure aerobics, while the latter gained 2 kilograms of muscle during the fat loss period. The difference in consumption over time is not much more than half a cup of milk tea?

Actually, just compare muscles to small appliances in your body that consume power on standby. Previous studies may have overestimated their power consumption. It was said that a set-top box consumes 10 watts of energy in standby, but the actual measurement is only 5 watts. But if you install more than a dozen set-top boxes in your home, the standby power consumption is always higher than that of other people's homes when they are empty, right? Especially after a person reaches the age of 30, their muscles naturally lose 1% to 2% every year, and their metabolism decreases accordingly. If you can insist on strength training two or three times a week to retain muscle mass, when you are 40 years old, you will consume more than people of the same weight who do not exercise, which may be enough for you to eat more ice cream every day and still not gain weight.

Of course, don’t overestimate this effect. If you have fried chicken and milk tea after you finish training, the extra consumption will not be enough. It is a long-term body buff, not a shortcut to lose weight without having to keep your mouth shut.