Lose Weight Gain Muscle
Here we go with yet another of my Top 100 weight loss tips, this being article number 66 in this series.
In this post, I'll be looking at the truism that is "lose weight, gain muscle." This is one of those things that at first seems like it's backwards, but when I explain it, you'll see that it is perfectly valid.
Gain Muscle to Lose Weight
When it comes to losing weight, one of the things you need your body to be able to do is to metabolize your food as efficiently as possible. This ensures that all the food you consume is processed and all the available nutrients are taken out for use by the body and all the waste products are eliminated. It also means that all sugars that are present in that food are used by your body and not stored as fat.
To do that, your muscles must use all those sugars, because muscle tissue is the major aspect of he human body that uses those sugars as fuel to convert into energy in the form of work.
Therefore, it stands to reason that the harder the muscles work, the more sugars they will burn and the fewer of those sugars will be left over for the body to store as fat. For muscles to work hard, they need to be strong, which comes from regular exercise.
However, there is another aspect to this that is very interesting to those who want to lose weight.
More Muscle Needs More Fuel
The more massive your body's compliment of muscle tissue, the more sugars will be burned during exercise. This means simply that if you gain more muscle mass, you will be able to burn off greater amounts of the calories that are in the food you consume through your calorie controlled diet.
Simply put, when you gain more muscle mass through regular exercise, you burn off more fats.
This happens because the greater muscle mass requires much more fuel to work, so it first takes it from your body's supply of readily available glucose in the bloodstream and then from whatever is left that is stored in other body tissues. When all that is gone, it finds an alternative fuel soure in ketones, which come from the fat cells. The more ketones the muscles burn, the more depleted are the fat cells, which take up less volume and your body size gets smaller (over time).
Getting Things Started
Now initially, that process will actually cause slight weight gain because, by volume muscle tissue weighs more than fat. But once the muscle mass increases, the fat volume will decrease faster, leading to weight loss. But that loss in weight becomes more sustainable because of the greater muscle mass that will always be able to burn off more calories during exercise than if you had lower muscle mass.
If you are serious about losing weight, make sure you work on building muscle mass as well as improving stamina and fitness when you exercise. This will mean you will be able to enjoy sustained loss of weight and have a slimmer, more toned and healthier body. So remember the words, "lose weight, gain muscle" and you will surprise yourself at what you can accomplish by working towards that goal!
100 Weight Loss Tips number 65 follows in the next post!
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Posted on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 in Top 100 Weight Loss Tips | 1 Comments
1 thoughts on "Lose Weight Gain Muscle"
Langford says:
You know, I probably already knew this about gaining muscle to lose weight, but somewhere I got off the ride and started getting lazy. Lack of exercise over the last year or so has meant gaining weight and flab, so I guess I have only myself to blame. Time to get back in the gym and work on those weak muscles and turn this around. Thanks for the motivational booster!