This weight training for women guide looks at everything you should know to benefit the most from your workouts.
Weight training for women can conjure up images of females in athletic poses flexing bulging, rippling muscles.
It is indeed possible to achieve that look if you desire it. However, weight training can also tone and sculpt your muscles and reduce your level of body fat.
The extent to which you develop your muscles is up to you. So if pounding the pavement isn’t bringing the results you want, swapping to a good weight training program for women could be just what you need to get that lean definition many of us desire.
Read on for information on weight training for women at home, including how to get started. We will also look at the results you can achieve from undertaking it, the role diet plays, and more.
Table of Contents
What results can I expect, and how quickly?
Women who train with weights twice a week can reduce their body fat by 3 percent in just ten weeks. That can equate to a dramatic 3-inch reduction of their waist and hip areas combined for some women.
Even more impressive is that this is achievable without reducing food intake. Just imagine how many inches you could lose if you cut calories too! Even without cutting calories, the lean muscle mass gained through weight training will increase your metabolic rate. As a result, you will burn more calories without trying.
Getting Started
Though men and women are anatomically different, a weight training program for women is pretty much the same as one for men, insofar as both need to take things easy when starting. It’s perfectly fine and even advisable to start with three weight training sessions per week. However, it’s important not to use weights that are beyond your strength and fitness level.
Using weights that are too heavy could lead to an injury that will keep you out of action. It could also cause you to feel weight training is too much for you. When this happens, people tend to give up before giving it a fair go.
If you aim is to tone and whittle fat from specific areas, concentrate on this, but don’t overdo it. A safe starting point for most people is two or three sets comprising 10 to 12 reps of each exercise. The weight you use should be heavy enough that when you get to the last rep of the set, you could not do another one and still maintain good form.
When you are stronger, alternate the intensity of your workouts to speed up your results. Try doing 8 to 10 reps with a light weight. Follow this with 12 to 15 reps using a medium weight, then 3 to 5 reps with a heavy weight.
If your primary aim is weight loss, work all of your muscle groups, in turn. Focus on moves that target more than one muscle group at a time. Squats and Lunges are good examples. Both work the muscles of the back, front and inner thigh in one move. Doing Squats and Lunges while holding weights will burn additional calories and increase muscle definition.
For more exercise ideas, check out Google or YouTube, or get this handy laminated exercise wall poster from Amazon.
Next, we will look at a weight training diet for women that will enable you to get the most from your workouts.
25-minute total-body weight training for women at home workout
Weight Training for Women and Diet
When undertaking a weight training program for women, or men for that matter, the importance of diet cannot be over-stressed.
Adequate protein is vital for building and maintaining muscle. Aim for around 25% of your calories to come from protein. Any less, and you will be burning lean muscle rather than fat.
The recommended protein intake for building muscle is one gram for every pound of body weight that is not fat. This means that a woman who weighs 140 pounds and has a body fat percentage of 25 should take in 105 grams of protein. This is the equivalent of around four servings of lean, healthy protein each day. Healthy protein sources nclude fish, chicken, turkey, soy products, cottage cheese, yogurt, and eggs.
Forty to fifty percent of calories should come from carbohydrates. Healthy carbs include brown rice, quinoa, oatmeal, whole grain bread, and fresh fruit and vegetables. 
The remainder of your diet should consist of healthy, unsaturated fats. Good sources include avocado, ground flax seeds, olive or safflower oil, mackerel, salmon, natural peanut butter, and almonds.
Ideally, while weight training, eat several small protein-based snacks/meals per day, rather than three larger meals. This will help keep hunger at bay. It will also provide your muscles with the nutrition they need as they grow and develop. Include a carbohydrate component with each meal, as well as a small amount of fat.
Splitting meals also works well. Try eating half of your meal before exercising and the other half after. Eating this way, you will be giving your muscles protein to use both during your workouts and afterward when they are recovering and growing.
Weight loss potential
Jogging and most other cardio workouts burn more calories during 
the workout than weight training. However, research has shown that women who weight train for one hour burn an additional 100 calories in the twenty-four hours following their workout. Train at this level three times a week, and you will lose approximately four and a half pounds of fat over a year from your workouts alone.
As you become stronger and progress to lifting heavier weights, you will burn even more calories, both during and after your exercise sessions. A recent study showed that women who performed 8 reps using a weight that was 85% of their maximum load burned twice the amount of calories in the two hours following their workout as they did when doing 15 reps using a weight that was 45% of their maximum load.
Approximately one-third of a woman’s weight consists of muscle. Unlike fat, muscles are metabolically active. This means that the more muscle we have, the more calories we burn. Turn twenty pounds of fat into twenty pounds of muscle, and you will burn an extra 50 to 100 calories per day. And, you can do this without reducing your food intake or doing any additional exercise.
Burning an extra 50 to 100 calories a day might not sound like much when we need to burn 3,500 calories to lose one pound of body fat. However, iy will add up to five to ten pounds over 12 months. Still doesn’t sound like much? Maybe not, but given a choice, this time next year, would you rather weigh five to ten pounds more or five to ten pounds less than you do today?
Fat Reduction
Most women know all too well what it’s like to diet and exercise for weeks or months to reduce saddlebags or belly fat, only to find these areas look the same as they did before we started, while our faces may appear gaunt and our bras swim on us. It isn’t possible to reduce fat from specific areas. However, when combined with the proper diet, an effective weight training program for women gives us the means of toning and cutting inches from our trouble spots.
If the backs of your arms are flabby, concentrate on exercises that tone your triceps. To tone and reduce your back bra strap area, work your lats. If you want to firm and reduce fat on your inner thighs, work your hip abductors. Whatever your problem area, regular weight lifting workouts will deliver a quick and dramatic improvement.
A recent study carried out by the University of Alabama in Birmingham focused on two groups of dieters, one of whom worked out with weights three times a week and another who engaged in aerobic activity Both groups lost an equal amount of weight during the trial. The one difference between the two groups was that the participants who lifted weights lost fat only. Those who worked out aerobically also lost around 8% of their muscle mass.
Weight Training for Women Summary
Weight training for women is an efficient way of toning your muscles and 
reducing your level of body fat.
Remember, muscle weighs more than fat, so weight workouts won’t necessarily enable you to lose weight as quickly as you may hope. You may even find you weigh a little more than before you started weight training. Don’t obsess about this. If your clothes fit better than they did before you began lifting weights, or if you need to buy a smaller size, ignore the number on the scale.
I hope you find this weight training for women guide useful, and that it answers your questions on the topic.
For more information on weight training for women, read Weight Lifting for Women – Facts and Myths.
You may also like this article on Upper Body Weight Training for Women.
