Is Weightlifting a Fat-Burning Workout?

Dear Swole Woman,

My question is about whether weightlifting is a fat-burning workout. But first, I must say that your column has greatly inspired my solo lifting journey. I got into lifting because of an ex and had no idea if my progress was similar to (or even normal for) other females. Your column and some of the resources you link to have given me the tools and confidence to keep going, especially after the relationship ended and I no longer had a dude by my side in the Big Scary Weight Section.

I started out following a routine which was carefully curated by my ex, consisting of 8 exercises doubled up for super-sets for sets of 15, 12, 10 and 8, swapping back and forth, with little or no rest. Oh, and we would run before and after this routine. This is what I continued to do for the next three years, albeit inconsistently, because, life.

A few months ago, I started going back to the gym in earnest. My goals are always 1) being healthy and strong 2) burning fat. I got up to 65 pounds on bench and 70 for deadlift, and I burned a good bit of fat, but I noticed that I seemed to be working a lot harder and moving much faster than everyone else in the gym. I was also truly exhausted after each workout.

This week, I started the 5x5 Stronglifts program (at my normal weight, not what they suggested) to try to switch it up. This program has come with a lot of recommendations from yourself as well as other lifters I know. However, after my old routine, it feels like such a drastic downshift! I find myself getting antsy during the 90-second rests and troubled over the lack of sweat. I want to continue to burn fat, and it just feels like this isn't going to cut it. Is it supposed to feel easy? Should I add in some additional exercises, or start with a sweat-inducing warm up? Or should I just follow the program and wait for the results?

Thanks for all of your advice!

I’m so glad you’re back to lifting!! So here is the thing about the way lifting feels, particularly when you’re just starting out with actually building strength, as opposed to just exercising—it may not feel like you’re doing much. Lifting for intensity, especially when the workout consists of maybe only 15 to 20 minutes of actual activity spread over 40 to 60 minutes, you might just not sweat very much at all. It is eminently common not to sweat at all, or only sweat a little, or to sweat buckets for that matter, as sweating threshold varies from person to person.

Emphasis on calories burned has become a real cultural force, and exercise studios or classes or instructors often sell their workouts based on that (“600 calories in one hour!” For the record, this is about the same burn rate as running for an hour; there is nothing special, calorie for calorie, about Barbell Dance Level II, or whatever it is that’s marketing itself on this relatively achievable calorie burn rate). But burning calories is not the best way to think about exercise or health, for a few reasons. For one, those calories-burned estimates are just that—estimates. And they might not look anything like what a particular individual is actually burning. What’s more is that research suggests that after a certain point, energy expenditure (calories burned) plateaus—it turns out that piling on activity isn’t necessarily piling onto the caloric burn. Beyond that, exercise only accounts for a small percentage of our bodies’ daily energy usage. Add to that the fact that exercise is now understood to either hinder—or at the very least not impact—weight loss efforts, and it starts to become clear that calorie burn probably isn’t the best way to look at whether a workout is effective, pretty much no matter what your goal is.

For another reason, if you’re comparing activities, while there is evidence that lifting weights burns fewer calories than most types of cardio, remember that more muscle mass helps increase your resting metabolic rate a bit, which means that at rest you’ll burn a few more calories than you would with less muscle mass (note: the increased burn is not wildly high). But! But. So many factors impact metabolism and weight loss that it’s not worthwhile to evaluate an activity based on caloric burn alone. Exercise is really good for your health, period. And after lifting, you have built actual muscles and strength to use in your daily life, a benefit that cannot be underestimated. But since you’re concerned specifically about fat burn, let me add one more point in the strength-training-is-great-for-all-goals column: The more muscle you have, the harder and longer you’ll be able to work out, which is great for your goal of burning fat.

When talking about your lifting routine, I’m not sure what you mean by “at my normal weight, not what they suggested.” But if it means that you are not adding weight to your lifts as the programs suggest, at least weekly if not every session, but you are also completing all your sets with flying colors and never feeling taxed, you should add weight. Any beginner lifting program will instruct you to add weight to your lifts consistently, and if you are eating and resting enough to support your lifting program—barring injuries or limiting factors like mobility problems—you should be able to.

Starting-strength “linear progression” type lifting programs, whether Stronglifts or GZCLP or something else, are not really designed for performing the same weights over and over for a relatively unskilled lifter. They are designed specifically for building strength, keeping the reps low and intensity high so that your muscles get the right amount of damage to rebuild on your rest days, and then you come to the next session stronger than before. “Linear progression” means, literally, getting consistently stronger by adding the same amount of weight at the same time interval, and this should be doable for at least a few months.

It is possible you have just started at weights that are relatively easy for you, but the nice thing about linear programs is that they get tougher relatively quickly. The best way to judge if you’re going hard enough isn’t by how much you sweat per se, but how you feel during and after your sets. For example, I don’t always break a sweat on sets of less than five, but I know I’m not being challenged enough on a set if I just set the barbell down and I am immediately bored and not thinking about how I’m going to complete my next set. If I feel out of breath and taxed and need time to stand and collect myself, but was still able to finish all the reps with perfect form, that was the right amount of difficulty. You may want to check that your lifting form is on point (if you don’t like Stronglifts’ resources on this, there are other websites, books, and videos), because it can be tough to get stronger if you’re not letting your body move and use its muscles in the strongest ways.

If you let these programs get you stronger and you decide to transition out of strength building after a while, you will be able to lift more weight when just working out. Maintaining muscle is not as much work as building it in the first place, but if you don’t have much to begin with, you should give yourself that chance to actually get strong.

Am I Doing Enough?

Hey Casey! I’ve been lifting semi-seriously for about a year. I started at basically negative strength and have seen all my lifts more than double since I began, and my body has changed a lot, but I don’t have a great frame of reference for how I’m doing. Most of the women I see talking about lifting in any public realm are already pretty accomplished and it’s unrealistic to compare myself to them. I also find that most people post their 1RM while I’m more interested in the weight you regularly work out with. I know that’s a less easy number to pin down but I’d love to see a round up of “normal” women who lift weights and their stats — a variety would be lovely. Since it’s not fair to ask without volunteering, I’m 5’4″, about 140 lbs. I squat 85, dl 135, curl 40. Haven’t benched in a while but I imagine it’s around 55, maybe 65 for low reps? These are all assuming 3+ sets at 8–15 reps. I can do 20 push-ups in a row but I still can’t do a pull-up.

Id love to see where other women in similar circumstances are so I can figure out for real whether or not I need to be ashamed that my squat is still under 100 (jk, but also not). — Alice

This is not an easy question to answer, but let’s start by covering a couple of recent times I cried at the gym.

I’m on a strength training program where, basically, you progress by working through a four-week cycle that goes from higher reps at lower weights to fewer reps at higher weights, with the idea that on the last week you are able to move more weight for more reps, or at least the same weight for more reps, than the last time you peaked four weeks ago. If you progressed, you increase how much you lift in the next cycle. If not, you stay at the same weights and try again.

In this most recent cycle, I’d felt like I was deteriorating a bit; I missed some reps and failed on a last set in an earlier week but chalked it up to not getting enough rest or eating correctly, and hoped that everything would be fine. Then my last cycle week rolled around, and I was supposed to hit my heaviest squat weight for three single reps. I failed on the second one and had to drop the bar (extremely loudly) onto the safety arms. I was fighting back tears as I unloaded the bar, because what were the last four weeks for if I had nothing to show for it by being able to do three simple squats? I reloaded the bar, tried again hoping my form was just off, and failed again. I couldn’t do it.

The next day, I was set to bench the max weight for the cycle. Benching had actually been going greater than ever, considering I have arms like noodles and hated benching for so long. I worked up again to the weight that I was supposed to lift for three heavy singles. I eked out one, but my form was wobbly. On the second, I had to let the bar drop to my chest and then fight my way out from under it (I should have had a spotter but didn’t) (either way the weight I was working with could never hurt anyone). This time I was really crying, sitting there on a bench in the middle of the room. I felt like I had fucked up and set myself back an entire month, and I had no one to blame but me.

I realize it is a particular kind of nuts to be crying while working out. But I have the same problem in the gym that I have in life, which is that I put too much pressure on myself, I feel competitive, and my expectations are so high as to be unrealistic, and then when I don’t meet them I get upset. I cry! I love to cry about a lot of things but especially all the things I’m not doing.

I realized after sitting there a while that it wasn’t like I’d done nothing. Six months ago my form was all over the place. I’d tightened up a lot, I’d definitely gotten stronger. I could now bench a weight for many reps that I previously couldn’t bench for 3. My muscles had done as much as they could with the resources they had. Crying about it was like crying about a novel I’d written in my free time over the last month that didn’t turn out to be God’s gift to the Pulitzer committee.

I used to struggle with the same question you’re asking, but the truth is it doesn’t matter what anyone’s numbers are. There are women of your height and build who can lift a collective 600 pounds more than you across the three lifts, but they’ve also been seriously dedicated to lifting for a few years. There are women who can’t handle 10-pound dumbbells (yet!!!!!!). Even accounting for time spent pursuing lifting, some women who have never touched a bar can walk up to one and squat well over 100 pounds; some can’t even do a bodyweight squat below parallel the first time because of poor flexibility. The only point of comparison that makes sense is your own self.

The only point of comparison that makes sense is your own self.

The point of lifting weights is to slowly increase the amount of work you’re doing, however you have to do that — more weight, more reps, more sets, variations on form, different accessory exercises. But for people like you and me, the point is also to know yourself, what you need, and what you can do, and not beat yourself up all the time worrying about what other people are doing or not living up to some unrealistic standard. If you are making progress compared to yourself, that is all you can ask. If someone is squatting more than you (and someone always will be), or indeed doing anything more than you, what can you do about it except try to get better within the limits of your resources and genetic potential? (And by that I mostly mean being a woman lifting weights.)

Sometimes even if you’re trying to get better at something, and you feel like you’re doing everything right, it will turn out you didn’t. And that’s fine! Like, goddamn, you still did something today, have all the gold medals. But you will be miserable if you go through working out like this, and indeed if you go through life like this, rather than taking advantage of your errors for the opportunity they are to learn some things about yourself and what you can do.

Where you started and how long you’ve been lifting are big factors in how much you might be able to lift currently. Some women take a few months to hit a squat weight equivalent to their body weight (for you, 140lbs on the bar); some take a year; some take longer. If you’re not progressing at all, definitely ask why — are you eating enough of the right things? Sleeping enough? Does your form need work? If these building blocks aren’t in place, it’s not going to matter whether other women are squatting more than you, because you won’t be able to push yourself. If they are, just keep going. You’re doing great just by lifting at all! But if you want to be stronger, you definitely could be, and I personally fully endorse you being as strong as humanly possible.