More muscles = less body fat
You've heard it many times:
“Build more muscles, to lose more fat” or
“The more muscles you have, the higher your body's resting metabolic rate.”
Most weight loss tips and plans recommend building more muscles so you can lose weight.
If you've ever questioned this fact and wondered how it all happens, this information is for you.
Read on, and I promise you'll be more inspired to keep up with regular exercise.
Understanding Your Metabolism
Let's start with the basics on your metabolism to understand better.
Metabolism refers to a bunch of processes that your body needs to function. Common examples include breathing, digestion, and blood circulation.
Your body needs a certain level of energy to keep up with these tasks at rest.
This energy is the Basal metabolic rate (BMR) also called the resting metabolic rate. Whether you exercise or not the BMR burns some energy.
For some the BMR is high, and they don't gain weight that fast, and for some their BMR is low, and they're quicker to pack on the pounds.
Age, gender and thyroid glands are some of the factors that affect your BMR.
If you fall into any or all categories below, you're more likely to have lower BMR:
over the age of 35 or 40
female
have thyroid problems
Luckily, there are ways to increase your BMR and maintain a healthy weight!
If you want to increase your metabolic rate you should:
a. Do some aerobic exercise every day. You can do short bursts of aerobic exercises like H.I.I.T workouts provide.
b. Do some strength training to gain muscle mass.
Why building muscles helps you lose weight and fat?
A strong reason is that muscle mass and tissue helps to burn more calories than body fat, at rest.
Ten pounds of muscle would burn 50 calories in a day spent at rest, while 10 pounds of fat would burn 20 calories.
That explains it!
Your muscles during exercise
During physical activity that involves muscles, there's contraction and relaxation of muscles. Your body takes up the sugar that is in the muscles in the glycogen form for energy.
Glycogen is the storage form of glucose. This is the first source of fuel used. Once, this is used, fat stores become the second preferred fuel source.
But there's another thing that happens in your muscles: Wear and tear of your muscles due to movements.
To cope with this, body increases oxygen supply to muscles to heal and repair the tear.
So, muscle building exercises help you grow bigger and stronger muscles as they heal.
Muscles take up the place of fat and as a result, you develop lean body mass.
It's clear, the more you strength train, you build more muscles which in turn has many benefits like it:
Keeps your metabolic rate high, so you burn more calories
Replaces unhealthy fat stores
Builds lean muscle mass
Keep in mind strength training is important as we get older when our metabolisms tend to slow down.
Adding strength training to your workout at least a couple of times a week helps.
If you need help adding some muscle just leave me a comment below!
