Q: In your article ?Lose Man Boobs?! Lose Belly Fat?! Get Abs Instead of the Fat Tire?!? you say that in repairing the body after lifting heavy weights ? that this process has incredible fat burning potential. Why should this process burn fat and why can?t moderate weights be used? Surely heavy weights will build bulky muscle and not all of us want that.

A: The reason that heavy weights work better is that they put more stress on your muscles, causing actual physical damage to them, which in turn forces your body to spend energy repairing that damage. It's that repair process that is has incredible potential to burn fat and it is that same process that's responsible for the often talked-about 'metabolism boost' from weight training.

Light weights which you can lift many times before getting tired simply do not cause the same physical damage to the muscle as do heavy weights, consequently your body does not have to spend nearly as much energy repairing the damage.

As far as your concern about getting all bulky from lifting heavy weights, it's nothing to worry about. Heavy heavy weightlifting all by itself will NOT build big muscles in great majority of men and in all women. What builds big muscles is heavy weight training PLUS overeating to gain weight. If you make sure you don't overeat and keep your weight constant or decreasing then your muscle gains will be very modest, if any, and you'll simply have more muscle tone.

So heavy weight training is the best tool for losing fat, combined with controlled diet to make sure your weight does not increase. You WILL get hungry from weight training and that's the indicator that your body is burning its fat reserves -- you just have to make sure you don't constantly keep eating to satisfy your hunger. Eat just enough to keep your weight constant or decreasing and I guarantee you will NOT build big bulky muscles.