I know a lot of women are scared of lifting weights because they are afraid of becoming too bulky or too big. Or if they do lift—it is only with very small amounts of weight, done for high reps. Both of these ideas are wrong—and below I will give you three reasons why you should lift.

REASON # 1

The first reason why women should lift weights and I mean lift weights heavy enough for them to only do sets of eight to twelve reps—but possibly lower—is this:

Strength—to me strength means health—it means you can walk up the stairs or get up out of a chair unassisted.

Or to be a little trivial it means that you can open that jar—when you have no one to ask for help.

However, as stated above you need to actually lift weights that challenge you and keep progressing to heavier and heavier weights.

Because if you don’t challenge your muscles—why should they adapt by getting stronger.

REASON # 2

The second reason you should lift weights and actually try and build muscle is this—

Muscle is the most metabolically active substance on your body, meaning it burns the most calories—even at rest.

However, please do not let anyone tell you that muscle is the only thing that burns calories because this is simply not true—fat also burns calories, just not as many as muscle.

Also, the after burn—meaning the calories your body uses up after your workout is over can be very substantial after a hard weight workout.

The reason for this is because if your workout was hard enough to actually force your body to need to repair the damage you did to your muscles—your body needs to use energy to do this—hence the calorie burn.

But again, the workout needs to be hard enough—so you need to challenge yourself to use weights that actually give your muscles a workout.

REASON # 3

You can totally reshape your body.

O.K.

Maybe not totally, I mean lifting weight will not make you taller or anything like that, but you can transform the way you look.

For example—lets say you wanted a smaller looking waist, but even though you may not have a lot of fat around your waist—you just happen to be one of those people who were not meant to have a really small waist.

Are you stuck?

Not exactly, simply work at making your shoulders broader and create the illusion of having a smaller waist.

Plus lets say you work hard and put on ten pounds of quality muscle and shed an equal amount of fat—your scale might not register much of a difference but I can tell you right now that your body will look completely different.

SOME POINTS

On the surface weight training might not look difficult, however, if you are just starting out you would be wise to ask around until you find a very competent trainer and learn to lift the right way—from the very beginning, trust me on this, you will be very glad you did.

Also, as good as lifting weights is for getting in shape and totally transforming your body don’t toss cardio out the window as it is still a vital part of an over all fitness plan.

You don’t have to go nuts on the cardio and spend hours on a stationary bike, three to four brisk walks per week that last about a half hour to forty five minutes will get the job done.

CONCLUSION

As you can see lifting weights offers plenty of benefits, but first you must get over the fear that you will get too big or look like a man.

Trust me, this will not happen.

What will happen is you will gain muscle and strip fat off your body—and end up looking and feeling better than ever before.