I see people spending a lot of time on cardio equipment. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but weight lifting is just as effective to burn calories. As an added bonus, when you build muscle, you’ll naturally burn calories as muscle consume calories to remain strong. When I talk to people about weight lifting for weight loss, most people don’t believe that lifting weights can burn enough calories. I wear a Polar F1 heart rate monitor for every workout which helps me track my heart rate, duration of workout and calories burned. Below are some images from this mornings weight lifting workout:

My workout this morning was brief. 23 minutes was all it took but I got everything in that I needed to. Today’s workout was one of the shorter ones on my current program.

My average heart rate (133) over the 23 minute workout was 133 beats per minute. While this isn’t a crazy heart rate, it is in my target heart  rate zone for weight loss, albeit on the low side of the zone. But in the zone nonetheless.

I wish my heart rate monitor automatically calculated calories burned, but since I have an older model, I have to use a calculation to determine calories burned.

After I plug my data into my formula, it shows me that I burned 296 calories in 23 minutes of lifting weights. I didn’t make this formula up myself. I found a Calories Burned by Heart Rate formula at the LiveStrong Website. All I did was put it into an Excel document.

The key to getting the most out of your weight lifting workouts and effectively burning calories is to workout with intensity. You can’t just go a grab a few light dumbbells and do a set of curls. I push myself every day I lift weights. I focus and put as much intensity into my workout as possible.

If you are looking at mixing up your workouts while still burning calories, try weight lifting. I highly recommend checking out New Rules of Lifting.