As I have covered in other articles, weight training (a form of anaerobic exercise) is crucial for weight loss. And the main reason is that it ensures you burn more calories when you're not working out.

By engaging in anaerobic exercise you at the very least maintain what muscle you have. This is the case even if you are taking in less calories than your 'maintenance level' (you do this when you are trying to lose fat).

By maintaining muscle, you ensure your metabolism rate remains high and you burn off more calories every single hour - even when you are sleeping.

If that's not enough benefit on its own, here are a few more:

• You'll develop a more toned, attractive body
• Hard weight workouts release endorphins, which elevates your mood and gives you more energy
• Makes you look younger by removing flabby skin and helping to reduce cellulite giving you a more toned shape to your body. As you get older, muscle tends to shrink quicker. Lifting weights stops and reverses this process.
• It helps you play other sports. Most sports tend to give you unbalanced muscle groups, with either one side of the body, or one part of the body used often, whilst other parts are totally neglected. Weights will help you to re-create a balance that will help you play these other sports at a higher level. You can even choose a weights program designed to specifically help you perform better at your chosen sport
• Weight lifting allows you to choose the exact body composition you want. If you want to build muscle you can design a program for that, or if you want to shed excess fat (like us) you can design a program for that also.
• Following a workout and making it a habit increases your self esteem. Firstly because your body is becoming closer to your dream body, you start to see yourself in a better light. This is only reinforced by the way others start to treat you, especially how the opposite sex starts to treat you. Secondly, it gives you confidence knowing that you can follow a set routine and achieve a difficult goal you've set for yourself. As an example, Arnold Schwarzenegger credits the life lessons he learnt during his years in body building to the success he's achieved in Hollywood and in politics.
• It clears the mind and reduces stress. It gives the body an outlet to take out your frustrations. You can often feel much calmer and more centered after a workout than before. It allows you to refocus and make you more productive during the rest of the day. As funny as it sounds, a good workout actually saves you time because you tend to get a lot more done during the rest of the day because your energy is so high.
• It helps you sleep better because hard training makes you physically tired. So many people have a hard time sleeping, and if they just exercised more they'd be able to solve that problem without any drugs.
• It improves your posture and reduces muscular pain such as back pain. Because so many of us don't move much with the increases in technology in our life, we have very weak muscles in core parts of our body. Constant debilitating back pain can often be solved through strengthening the supporting muscles and losing belly fat.

So you see, weight training is essential in your pursuit of a great body. So what sort of weight training should you do.

If you are serious about losing weight, you need a holistic exercise program that includes both aerobic and anaerobic exercises (click here to check out the benefits of aerobic exercise).

So what sort of program do I recommend?

As far as exercise programs go for long lasting weight loss, I recommend two programs.

Tom Venuto's "Burn The Fat" ebook is the first recommendation because apart from containing a great section on exercise (he's a natural bodybuilder and personal trainer), he also has the best overall book on weight loss - from the many I've reviewed.

If you're only interested in the exercise section, then I believe Craig Ballantyne's "Turbulence Training" is best for you. His nutrition package may not be as comprehensive as Tom's book, but his exercise section is just killer. It is the best one I've seen that's targeted for weight loss. He even covers bodyweight exercises in his course (which is using your own bodyweight to simulate weight training without the weights)