Muscle Building And Weight Loss

May 5, 2008

Did you know that there is a connection between muscle building and weight loss? Don’t worry, you don’t have to build up big body building style muscles. This is more about toning your body and how it can help you lose more weight every single day.  

Of course, any type of exercise is important for weight loss.. In fact, weight loss without increased activity is pretty hard to do. But it is also important to consider what type of exercise you do. While cardio workouts are great for getting the heart pumping and burn extra calories, you need to build muscle mass if you want those calories to keep flying off at times when you are not working out. That’s why it’s important to do exercises that help in toning and muscle building.

Adding a single pound of muscle mass will cause you to burn up to 50 extra calories per day, without you having to do anything else. You can imagine how much you can speed up your weight loss, if you replace 10 lbs of fat with muscle. Another point to consider is that on a regular diet, you lose muscle in addition to losing fat. This slows down your metabolism and causes you to gain weight when you go back to your normal eating habits. This is also called the JoJo effect of dieting. If you add muscle mass instead, you keep burning more calories and are more likely to keep the weight off for the long run.

Workouts like running, biking, and swimming can burn hundreds of calories per hour, but have much less benefit after the exercising is done. While they can increase muscle mass, the increase is not nearly significant as using weights. Lifting weighs burns fat while you are building muscle, and continues to burn after you stop. As your muscles are  building up, you are able to lift more weight, helping you burn more calories. This means the stronger you get; the faster you’ll start to lose body fat.

Of course you shouldn’t go out and try to overdo it. This is especially true with weight training. Using too much weight can not only hurt your muscles, it can also cause permanent damage to tendons and ligaments. Then there is also the added danger of being crushed or trapped by extreme weight. Use a personal trainer when you are just starting out to learn  the proper techniques of weight lifting. Later your trainer can be replaced with a workout buddy. When using weight training, always start slow and build your way up. And remember to use a spotter when lifting significant amounts of weight.

Of course weight training will not completely replace cardio workouts. For best results you should alternate between aerobic exercise and weight training. This gives you the benefits of both to power maximum weight loss.

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Posted by admin | Filed Under Home Workout Info 

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