Doing strength exercises like lifting weights while losing weight helps keep your muscles and bones strong, unlike just walking or cycling, which can make you lose more muscle and bone.

In untrained young men, doing resistance training for eight weeks with consistent effort and workload leads to a reduction in body fat by about 5–8%, no matter how the exercises are grouped into sets.

If someone with extra weight loses a lot quickly while dieting and lifting weights, they might not build as much muscle as they could if they lost weight more slowly.

For guys who don't usually work out, doing regular weightlifting cuts more overall body fat and thigh fat than a special pre-exhaustion method over 9 weeks, probably because you lift more total weight with the regular way.

Lifting weights helps adults gain muscle — studies show it consistently leads to modest muscle growth when done regularly.

Over a 10-week period, two different types of resistance training—short, intense sessions and longer, traditional sessions—did not lead to measurable changes in overall muscle mass, fat mass, or body fat percentage in healthy young adults. Small trends suggested the intense training might be slightly better for building muscle and reducing fat, but these trends were not statistically significant.