The Best Way for Women to Lose Fat
- Weight training combined with a modest reduction in calories is the best way for women to lose fat. Build a beautiful body in only a few hard minutes a day.
- Training with weights (using a whole-body program) 3-6 times a week, combined with a modest reduction in calories (about 500 a day), is is the best way for women to lose fat. It leads to the most dramatic and satisfying results of any fat loss program imaginable.
- Women’s fear of “bulkiness” and “muscles” often leads to relatively low-effort workouts and that goes a long way in explaining why a lot of women rarely morph into the swimsuit goddess they aspire to be.
- In your diet, focus on protein. Prioritize protein in every meal and snack, and the rest of your diet naturally autoregulates and takes care of itself, almost effortlessly. Consuming more protein sets a cascade of positive effects into motion, leading to improved body composition: less fat and more muscle. Protein-first eating is science-backed and works for everyone, every single time. Eat roughly one gram of protein per pound of body weight.
Should Women Train Differently From Men?
Luckily, most women today are no longer afraid of lifting weights. So how should they train with weights? Almost exactly like men, with a few minor differences. Here they are:
- Slightly more reps per set: Women don't have the capacity to recruit as many motor units as men do. As such, they'll need 1-2 more reps to fully stimulate their muscles. So when training for strength, a man should use between 1 and 5 reps while a woman will benefit more from doing 3-6 reps. When training for muscle gains, men will benefit from doing 5-10 reps while women should stick to 7-12 reps.
- Slightly more sets per exercise: Most women will need to perform 1-2 more sets of an exercise to achieve the same degree of stimulation as a man, again because of their lower motor unit activation.
- Slightly less intensity: This isn't to say that women shouldn't lift heavy, but since they need a few more reps and a few more sets, the relative intensity must be decreased a little to allow for proper progression.
- There are no "man exercises" or "woman exercises", but that doesn’t mean women should train exactly like men. Although women gain relative strength and muscle at virtually the same rate as men, there are key differences in how women should train to get the best results.
So What Is The Best Way for Women to Lose Fat?
To discover the best way for women to lose fat, let's follow the recommendations of one of the premier fitness coaches in the industry, Nick Tumminello. Here are the general guidelines for women, tailored to the
female body. Nick's also provided a sample workout for women so you can see how
these guidelines are used.
1. Women benefit from more volume than men.
Research shows that women can generally do more reps at a
given intensity than men. So, it’s reasonable to say that women should
generally perform more reps per set than men. However, this can lead to using
very light weights for endless reps.
The weight you use on each set is determined by the number
of reps you’re doing. Both women and men should choose a load that leaves them
unable to perform any more than indicated on the workout program, but without
cheating by using momentum.
But, since women have greater muscle endurance than men when
using light to medium loads, they can benefit from doing an additional set. So,
if a generic workout program calls for 3 sets of 8-12 reps, women will
generally get better results by adding a fourth set.
Adding an additional set takes advantage of women’s superior
muscle endurance while keeping each set’s intensity high enough to create
strength adaptations.
2. Women don’t need as much rest between sets.
Women recover faster after a set than men because they’re
less fatigable. Therefore, women don’t need as much rest between sets as men.
This is why many women prefer faster-paced workouts like tri-sets and circuits.
Tri-set training – doing three exercises that hit a different
muscle group, performed in series – can be more effective than traditional
training. It enables you to rest longer between sets of the same muscle group
while maximizing training time by doing a set targeting a different muscle
group.
Tri-sets are especially great for women because they allow
them to keep moving, which maximizes work while still getting ample rest
between sets hitting the same muscle group – important for getting the most out
of each set.
3. Women can train their upper bodies more often than men.
Women not only recover faster than men after each set, but
they also recover faster after workouts.
For example, one study of males and females involved
performing the bench press three times per week for five sets at 50% to 100% of
perceived five-rep max (5RM). After the program, the subjects, on three
consecutive weeks, participated in two testing sessions per week: baseline
session and recovery session. During the testing sessions, subjects performed
an estimated 1RM bench press while resting during a 4-hour, 24-hour, or 48-hour
recovery period.
Females had no differences in muscle strength, regardless of
recovery time, while the males had decreases in estimated 1RM at the 4-hour and
24-hour recovery times.
Interestingly, researchers looking at the bench press and
squat performance found no differences between sexes in squats but did find
differences in bench press performance.
The difference in upper-body recovery and performance
between sexes may be because men generally have 10 times more circulating
testosterone than women. Upper-body muscles may have more androgen
receptors than lower-body muscles. So it’s possible that this hormonal
difference might permit greater development of upper-body muscles in men
compared to women.
What does this mean in practical terms? Women can hit their
upper-body lifts more often throughout the week than men. So, if a woman wants
to increase her numbers on a certain upper-body lift, she can hit that lift
three times per week. (Men should stick to twice per week.)
The same applies to those looking to increase the size of
certain upper-body muscles. Women who want bigger shoulders can hit them hard
three times per week, while men should train shoulders hard twice per week.
4. Women should do fewer plyometric exercises.
Female bodies use less of the stretch-shortening cycle when
it comes to upper-body lifting, which makes them less efficient, slower, and
possibly more at risk of injury from explosive plyometric exercises.
The stretch-shortening cycle is more pronounced in men. In
several studies, men demonstrated greater stretch-shortening-related power in
both lower and upper-body movements.
In short, women are better off doing less plyometric volume
than men. A simple way to apply this in pre-written workout programs is for
women to do one less set than men of jumping, bounding, hopping exercises, or
explosive upper-body lifts.
This works out nicely because the ladies can do an extra set
of strength training (see number one above) while the guys do an extra set of
explosive plyometric exercises.
5. Women can get more from less sprinting.
A study involving male and female soccer players found that
men have a superior ability to recover between sprints. Males had less drop-off
in their sprint speed between subsequent sprints than women.
So, women would do best with fewer rounds of sprints than
men in a given workout. Women can do a few extra sets of strength work instead
since it’ll likely benefit them more anyway.
6. Women will benefit from more hamstring strength.
Females need to emphasize hamstring-oriented exercises like
leaning lunges and RDL lunges. Why? Because women are more quad-dominant than
men, and they tend to have weaker hamstrings, making them more prone to knee
injury.
This doesn’t just mean going bonkers on the RDLs, 45-degree hip extensions, and other exercises that hit your glutes and hams in their lengthened range. It means incorporating some knee flexion exercises, such as machine leg curls and stability-ball leg curls two to three times per week. And anyone trying to build or strengthen hamstrings will need more than one exercise for complete development. Hopefully you are starting to see why the best way for women to lose fat is through a combination of weight training and modest calorie reduction.
Sample Total-Body Workout for Women
Here’s what a total-body workout for women might look like.
This can be done in 60 minutes or less, including a warm-up.
Exercise Sets Reps
A1. Squat Jump 3 5
A2. Cable Lateral Raise 3 20-25/side
A3. Stability Ball Plate Crunch 3 12-15
B1. Barbell Romanian Deadlift 3 8-12
B2. Side Elbow Plank with Dumbbell Rear-Delt Flye 3 10-12/side
B3. Plank with Shoulder Tap 3 20-25 sec.
C1. Underhand Grip Lat Pulldown 3 10-12
C2. Dumbbell Behind-The-Head Triceps Extension 3 12-15
C3. NT Loop (Buy at Amazon) Glute Walk 3 50 sec.
D1. Cable One-Arm Row with Reverse Lunge 3 12-15/side
D2. Push-Up 3 max reps
D3. Stability-Ball
Hamstring Curl 3 15-20
For these tri-sets, perform all reps of an exercise before
moving to the next one. Rest no more than 30 seconds between each exercise.
Once you’ve completed all three exercises, rest 1 to 2 minutes. Then do the
next round.
I’m not saying that men couldn’t benefit from a workout for
women or that women wouldn’t benefit from a workout for men. All I’m showing is
how I tweak workouts so that women get the most out of their training, given
their unique differences.
The workouts I write for women have less explosive work and more strength training. Plus, the workouts I write for men contain more work on the upper traps and arms, whereas the women’s workouts have more work for glutes and hamstrings. Hopefully the info contained in this article has easily laid out for you the best way for women to lose fat.
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