Do you want to lose fat? Work the muscle!
Do you want a safe way to help your body get rid of unsightly body fat, better yet, keep it off for good?
Learn to speed up your body’s metabolism. One way to do this is by incorporating resistance training (weight training) into your routine. That’s because the more muscle mass you have, the more body fat you’ll lose, even at rest!
Your metabolic rate determines how your body uses calories throughout the day for energy.
Metabolism is simply the rate at which your body burns food. It is the conversion of digested nutrients into components for energy or muscle building.
Having a fast metabolism means that we will burn more calories frequently because our body will use and burn food more frequently. One way to speed up our metabolism is by increasing the amount of lean muscle tissue in the body.
Muscle helps speed up your metabolism. Since muscle is metabolically active tissue, the more you have, the more calories you burn. This is why resistance training is so vital to long-term weight loss.
By the way, long-term weight loss is really the only safe and effective way to lose weight. Quick weight loss is not long-term weight loss.
When you add lean muscle tissue to your body composition, you increase the number of calories your body burns and also increase your metabolic rate. Muscle requires energy to maintain itself, and it gets that energy from burning calories. So building muscle is one of the best long-term weight loss tools you can use.
There are studies that suggest that you only expend about 10% of your daily calories through exercise, the rest is expended through your body’s metabolic functions. So again, the more lean muscle tissue, the more calories your body will burn for energy throughout the day as you go about your daily routine.
Now the fastest and easiest way to build muscle through resistance training is to perform your resistance training with fewer repetitions and a little more weight.
It would stand to reason that if you could lift 100 pounds 10 times, you could lift more weight if you had to lift less than 10 times. I incorporate lower repetitions into my clients’ training programs and the results are an increase in lean muscle.
Over time, this increase in lean mass will help accelerate fat loss by tapping into stored body fat as a fuel source. Losing body fat, remember, simply comes from expending more calories than you consume.
Also, gradually push yourself to lift more weight when the weight you are using becomes too easy. If it’s too easy, you won’t benefit much.
Combining resistance training with supportive eating throughout the day will help your body add lean muscle to your frame.
This lean muscle will increase the number of calories you burn throughout the day. So to lose fat, lift weights and build muscle!