Originally Posted by
Drew Eckhardt
Strength training is good for other aspects of fitness, and longer (ideally 7-10 minutes) anaerobic efforts will make you faster, but aren't necessary for weight loss.
Efforts below your aerobic threshold are excellent for loosing weight because up to 80% of the energy comes from your fat stores instead of depleting your glycogen which makes you hungry leading to more food intake.
While you can ignore the resulting hunger, that's likely to catabolize both fat and muscle.
Strength training and sprint intervals keep you metabolism elevated for up to 36 hours or more after the workout. This means that your body is burning calories even when you're resting and doing nothing. Weight loss has a lot to do with the persons metabolism. Aerobic workouts just don't elevate your metabolism the same way as anaerobic workouts do.
Originally Posted by
Drew Eckhardt
One pound of muscle only uses 6-10 Calories a day.
And that's a good thing, because the more lean muscle tissue somebody has the more calories they will burn, even when sitting a doing nothing... The less lean muscle tissue a person has the less calories they burn and the more likely they are to gain fat.