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.

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.

In simple terms, this means that doing resistance training with either medium or heavy weights leads to about the same amount of fat loss in young women who are new to exercise over 8 weeks. Both types of workouts can help you lose fat.

Lifting light or heavy weights to exhaustion for 12 weeks didn’t change body fat or muscle mass in women who had never lifted before.

In individuals with elevated body fat stores, resistance training during a caloric deficit can sustain muscle hypertrophy while promoting net fat loss.

If healthy guys between 18 and 40 lift weights regularly for at least two weeks up to a year, they typically gain about 1.5 kilograms of muscle—no matter what kind of weight routine they follow.