Another benefit afforded by proper Nautilus training is the loss of bodyfat – without dieting. According to Dr. Ellington Darden, the former head of research for Nautilus Sports/Medical Industries:

Nautilus exercise, unlike dancing, jogging, swimming, or cycling, provides a double reducing effect on the body in terms of fat loss; first, it burns calories through high intensity exercise; second, it stimulates the muscles to grow stronger and more shapely. Stronger, shapelier muscles actually burn additional calories even at rest, allowing you to lose fat more quickly.

To many people, the notion that an individual can actually lose bodyfat and become leaner by working out with weights is nonsensical. After all, bodybuilding training simply builds bigger muscles, right? To lose bodyfat, the general advice is to start jogging, go on a diet or enroll in an aerobics class. However, it is this very “muscle building” feature of bodybuilding training that is responsible for the fat loss.

The reason is that muscle cells, unlike fat cells, are designated as “active” tissue, meaning that a certain number of calories are required simply to sustain their existence. In fact, for every pound of muscle you gain, between 50 and 100 calories are required daily simply to sustain its cellular activity. If, for example, you could add even one pound of muscle to your body, your resting metabolism would increase by roughly 75 calories a day -- even if you did no exercise at all. That may not sound like much, but, given the fact that there are 3,500 calories in a pound of fat tissue, if you were able to keep that new pound of muscle tissue for an entire year, you would lose approximately eight pounds of fat. If you try to picture in your mind what eight pounds of butter looks like, you will begin to appreciate just how radical a change in appearance an eight-pound fat loss truly is. However, the converse is also true: if you lost a pound of muscle tissue (whether through atrophy, overtraining or severe dieting), you would also lose that pound of muscle’s calorie-burning potential, with the result that a certain percentage of the calories you took in on a daily basis would now end up being stored as fat -- with the net result, again, being a rather profound change in your appearance, this time for the worse.

Strength training, though for years considered the weak sister of health and fitness exercise, has actually been proven to be more effective than aerobics in reducing the level of bodyfat in the body. Wayne Wescott, an exercise physiologist and strength-training consultant to the YMCA, conducted a study in which he compared two groups of 36 men and women who had completed an eight-week program. All of them consumed a reduced caloric diet made up of 20% fat, 20% protein, and 60% carbohydrates. In addition, the subjects were required to exercise three times per week for 30 minutes a session. One group combined a 15-minute total body weight training program with 15 minutes of aerobic exercise. The other group did 30 minutes of aerobic activity only. The results were fascinating; the aerobics-only group lost an average of 3.2 pounds of fat, but the weight training/aerobic exercise group ended up losing an average of 10 pounds of fat -- almost three times more fat loss than the aerobics-only group! It’s significant to note that this group also gained two pounds of muscle per person, compared to a loss of a half a pound of muscle per person among the aerobic exercise-only group.

Another study conducted by researchers at Emory University in Atlanta, revealed similar findings, this time with overweight women as their subjects. The women, who either did 20 minutes of aerobics three times a week or nothing at all, lost only 72% of fat per pound of weight lost. Mary Ellen Sweeney, M.D., of the Emory Health Enhancement Program, reported that those who did 20 minutes of strength training three times a week retained more muscle mass -- which parlayed into 85% of every pound they lost being fat tissue.

In light of the above research, an effective Nautilus training program would appear to be the most efficient route to obtaining a lean, muscular body and, perhaps more importantly, maintaining it.