Weights work

Shifting stubborn fat doesn’t have to mean spending hours burning calories on the bike or, reveals that we can lose around 1.4 per cent of our entire body fat through strength training alone. The findings from 58 papers show that participants exercised for around 45-60 minutes for an average of 2.7 times per week, and the researchers focused on how much the total body fat percentage (the amount of the body that’s made up of fat mass) changed after strength training programmes. ‘When we strength train, we gain muscle mass and lose body fat, so the number on the scales won’t look as low as it would after aerobics training,’ say the researchers, but the body fat percentage measurement shows fat loss appears to be on par with aerobics and cardio training, despite the different figures on the scales.