Resistance training triggers hormones that increase abdominal fat burning.
When women come to me wanting to change their body composition, I direct them straight to the weight room. Contrary to the old “cardio to burn fat” “resistance training to build muscle” dogma that mainstream fitness magazines dished out for decades, resistance training is superior for burning fat–especially belly fat.
For one, resistance training does build muscle tissue, which is more metabolically active than fat. But the real magic happens on the hormonal level. A study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology that was done specifically on a group of young, healthy trained females found that resistance training exercise significantly increased belly fat burning, largely due to the hormones released when we lift weights.
