If you are dieting and want to find a good way to complement your weight loss goals you can do so by adding a strength training program to your weight loss regime. In order to lose weight you need to burn more calories than you take in. You need to burn 3500 calories to lose one pound of excess baggage. You can diet alone and lose weight slowly without concentration on toning up or you can diet, firm up, and speed up this process by implementing strength training into your fitness regimen.

Dieting alone will accomplish weight loss. However, adding strength training to your plan will allow you the benefit of not only accelerating the process of weight loss, but doing so while toning and firming your body. When you lose weight sometimes your skin does not always go back in place in certain areas. If your skin has lost some of its elasticity, such as with obesity or age, you will notice some areas that are not quite as firm as they once were. This requires exercise to tone and firm these areas. Additionally, weight training will build the needed muscle that you need to increase your metabolism. Increasing your metabolism will help to burn those calories and succeed at a much faster rate of weight loss.

Muscle does weigh more than fat, but muscle also burns calories at a higher speed. By increasing your muscle mass through strength training you will be able to burn calories much more efficiently while also acquiring a toner, more firm body.

The calorie burning effect that strength training gives you will keep your body burning calories all day long. Strength training will also strengthen your bones. This is a very important piece of information, especially for women who are at an increased risk for osteoporosis.

Strength training can be accomplished by working out with weights. If you are just starting out, go easy. It makes no sense to push yourself one day only to be too sore to work out the rest of the week because you over did it. For women, starting out with 3- to 5-pound weights is ideal. You can find weight training programs that you can do at home such as P90X or you can go to your local gym and spend money on a personal trainer.

You will want to build up slowly and with this type of thought you will notice gradual increases in your ability to accomplish your goals. Start out slowly and work your body so that you are able to perform each workout with just the slightest discomfort in your final repetition. Working beyond this point means that your body is not yet ready for the next level. Start out with 2 to 3 sets of 10 repetitions of each exercise. If this is too much scale back a bit and proceed even more slowly until you are ready for more. Let your body be the judge of just how much you can handle comfortably. Never work on the same group of muscles two days in a row. Your muscles need time to rest in between workouts.

Strength training for weight loss is the most effective way to reach your goals. You will see your weight drop more quickly while sculpting your body at the same time.