Strange but True: Weight Training = Weight Loss

The bad news, of course, is now there is no excuse for eschewing the repetitive, tedious, and work-like routines of resistance training. The good news is if you quit whining and do the weights, you no longer have to run six miles to keep the adipose tissue in check. In fact, you never did. Weight training will take care of that. Boston University’s daily news site BU Today reports that in experiments with genetically engineered mice, researchers have
demonstrated that so-called type II muscle, the tissue created by
resistance training, improves the body’s overall metabolism through
chemical signals that promote fat-burning by other tissues, such as the
liver. The study, whose results are published in Cell Metabolism, –stop me if you’ve already read them– turned off the gene in mice that regulates the growth of type II muscle fibers. They then fed the animals the rodent equivalent of fast food–high fat, high sugar–diet. The mice got fat. Really fat. But when the gene was switched back on, and type II muscle allowed to grow, he mice didn’t just get strong; they got thin, even without any increase in physical activity.
Read more in BU Today, and start pumping up.