How Many Calories Does Weight-Lifting Burn?

How many calories does weight-lifting burn? If you weigh 160 pounds and weight-train for about 30 minutes you can burn anywhere from 130 to 220 calories. The number of calories you burn depends on your activity level and the intensity of the workout.

If you compare a cardio workout to a weight training workout in terms of how many calories you burn in that setting. A cardio workout will always burn more calories than a weight-training workout for the same duration time.

How many calories does weight-lifting burn? iStock-photo credit: Peopleimages

But the biggest benefit of weight-training over cardio is it builds more muscle than cardio. And muscle burns more calories at rest than other tissues including fat. So, the building of the lean muscle mass is what drives the resting metabolism and that is the ability to burn calories at rest.

There was a research study that measured the resting metabolism in 24 weeks of weight-training, and it showed that it increased the metabolism in men by 9%. And in women it increased the resting metabolism by 4%. The resting metabolism increased by 140 calories per day in men. And in women it increased by 50 calories per day.

The reason weightlifting is better than cardio is because it will keep your metabolism elevated longer throughout the day. And weight-training is better for building muscle. If you can combine both weight-training and cardio in your exercise routine on a regular basis it gives you the highest chance to be healthier than most people.

There are times when you can increase muscle and drop body fat, but the scale stays the same number. It is one of the reasons why the scale isn’t the best way to gauge how fit and healthy you are.

One of the best ways to determine how fit and healthy you are by doing a body composition test which will assess how much body fat you have. And it will assess how much muscle you have and how much fat you need to lose to get to your goal. And it will also gauge what your resting metabolic rate is, and it will assess how many calories you need to consume to maintain your bodyweight.

Weight-Training may not burn as many calories’ duration wise as cardio but the number of calories you can burn after the workout is significantly more than cardiovascular training. The after-burn effect is called EPOC and that stands for exercise post oxygen consumption. And EPOC occurs during weight-training and (HIIT) high intensity interval training.

The Bottom Line is you can burn an average of 130 to 220 calories if you weigh 160 pounds for a 30-minute workout. But the biggest benefits of weight-training are the muscle building aspect which is what drives how many calories you can burn at rest. And weight-training optimizes the amount of the EPOC effect which is the number of calories you burn at rest.

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