Weight Training Trims More Ab Fat in Women

You now have another reason to encourage your female members to lift weights: A new study has found that older women tend to lose more fat from their abdomen than men as a result of resistance training. Although men lost less fat from a particular region in their abdomen, both men and women increased their strength by a similar amount, and both lost the same amount of total fat mass as a result of weight training.

During the study, published in the June issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, researchers measure the effect of 25 weeks of resistance training for 12 women and 14 men. The study participants, age 61 to 77, completed two sets of 10 repetitions, three times per week. Exercises included back extensions, bench presses and bent leg sit-ups.

After participants completed the exercise program, CT scans were used to measure the loss of fat from a particular region of their abdomen. Researchers found that while women lost about 15 cubic centimeters of abdominal fat, men saw a slight increase in belly fat following the resistance training. They also found that both men and women improved their strength by an average of 15 percent and 16 percent, respectively, and lost about 4.4 pounds of total body fat.

The finding about abdominal fat was surprising, especially given the fact that men had lost as much overall fat as women. However, researchers note that it is possible that the men had actually lost some belly fat, but they had not captured that difference during their measurements, which only sampled one specific region.

Carol Glasscock, MS, PT