No, you should not. In fact, weight training or resistance training is absolutely essential to your losing weight and keeping it off. There are many ways to lose weight or body fat. Generally, making lifestyle changes and improving your state of health will help your body to burn fat. While doing just cardiovascular exercise or aerobic activity or reducing your daily caloric intake (two very popular weight loss methods) may help you to lose weight, they will also deplete your lean muscle tissue and set you up for osteoporosis and other musculoskeletal and metabolic conditions.
Resistance training, when done properly, is essential for increasing lean muscle tissue. And muscle is so metabolically active that it requires constant energy from your body to maintain itself. In other words, maintaining your lean muscle tissue allows you to burn calories and fat all day long, even while you sleep. It increases your resting metabolic rate.
As for your concern about getting that muscle-bound look, it"â¢s not likely. Very few women have enough testosterone to acquire and maintain that amount of lean muscle tissue. While it is true that some women are more muscular than others, it is largely related to the amount of testosterone in their bodies. In fact, professional female body builders often supplement with testosterone to get that more muscular look. To some degree, the amount of testosterone in your body depends on genetics and the health of your endocrine system. Most increases realized by women who do resistance training will be in the density, not the size, of your muscles.
So as long as your living an otherwise healthy lifestyle, feel free to work those muscles.
