In my day to day training sessions, I seem to spend a lot of time convincing my female clients that they should weight train and that it is one of the best ways of training in order to burn fat and 'tone up'. Furthermore, I spend a lot of time explaining why so I thought I would try and solve that problem in one sweep ;)

The reason that men are physically stronger than women (generally speaking!), is mainly due to the male sex hormone - Testosterone. Women also produce testosterone but in much smaller amounts compared to men. Testosterone is the main hormone which produces muscle growth, deepening of the voice during puberty, body/facial hair growth, and is one of the main culprits as to why men are more aggressive than women (again, generally speaking!) to name a few. Why is all of this relevant to women and fat loss? As mentioned above, usually the higher your testosterone levels are, the more lean muscle tissue you have. As muscle is very active tissue, it needs lots of calories to survive which therefore elevates the metabolism - this is usually why we are in our best shape during our teens when our hormones are at their 'peak' and the metabolism is at its highest.

So why should women lift weights? Weight lifting increases natural testosterone levels (if diet and lifestyle are in order) and kick-starts the metabolism again! Now to answer the main worry that women have with regards to lifting weights ....... you will NOT suddenly turn into the She-Hulk! Your natural Testosterone levels are simply not high enough for weight-lifting to have the same effects as it does on a man. If you're wondering how female bodybuilders get to look like that then the simple answer is usually down to drugs i.e. anabolic steroids (synthetic forms of testosterone). OR they have trained for years and years very intensively and have adjusted their diets and lifestyles in order to purposely look that way, it doesn't just happen by accident!

So what are you waiting for? Get in the gym, ignore the big guys grunting next to you (unless that's your thing!) and start lifting! Obviously it would be advisable to hire a Personal Trainer (such as myself!) to show you how to train safely without injuring yourself as injuries are very common with weight-lifting if not done correctly and to help you find the best way for you to train individually as everyone is slightly different.