Absolutely! Strength training is not about bulking up, it’s about improving your muscles and improving on everything else at the same time, including your weight-loss goals. Assuming strength training is only for men is outdated and misinformed. It’s not only something that women can do, women need to do it just as much as men do.

Strength training, particularly a form of progressive strength training using the proper exercises, order, and variety, can be tailored to tone and shape new muscle, burn fat and improve the density of the muscles you have already.

But, perhaps even more importantly, strength training helps speed up your metabolism and improves insulin efficiency.

One study examining what happens when we replace fat with muscle found that losing 4 pounds of fat and adding 3 pounds of muscle increased participants metabolic rate by 7 percent, meaning that they burned 120 calories more per day than usual just going about their normal business.

120 calories may not sound like much per day, but it adds up real fast. A single pound of fat is comprised of 3,500 calories. You burn 3,500 calories; you lose a pound of fat.

Now then, burning an extra 120 calories over the course of a whole year means: 365 x 120 = 43,800, i.e., 12.5 pounds of fat.

That’s right, just that little bit of improvement over a year results in you burning off more than 12 pounds of fat. You would have to spend a lot of time on a treadmill to get the same weight loss results you get from adding strength training.