It's a well documented fact that adding some form of exercise routine to a weight loss program is a very important part of boosting your metabolism and burning up calories. And also speeding the loss of that extra body fat. If you try to lose weight through dieting alone you're almost guaranteed to put it all (and probably more) back on again, when you come off the diet.
Unless of course you're born with one of those unusually active metabolisms which allows you to, almost freakishly, eat thousands of calories a day without weight-gain consequences, you're like the vast majority of us who need to give your metabolisms a bit of a kick through exercising.
Now, you might think that cardiovascular (aerobic) exercise is an important part of boosting your metabolism; and you'd be right! But it isn't the complete answer to losing weight. In addition to a healthy and responsible cardiovascular program, muscle building is an exceptionally powerful way to boost metabolism. Many people - particularly some women - are very wary and cautious about undertaking any exercise regimen that can lead to muscle building.
The old perception was that muscle building leads to muscle bulking, and before long, you'd huge muscles popping and sprouting everywhere and gorging with veins. This is, frankly, not the case. Still, however, the question remains: why would women (and, of course, men) who want to boost their metabolism and lose weight focus on muscle building? Because a pound of muscle burns calories all the time, even at rest, while a pound of fat is just stored energy. Fat is almost a completely inactive tissue.
And what does this mean? It means (and get ready to stare in awe) that if you have more muscle on your body - anywhere on your body - you will simply burn more calories, and lose weight, as a result. You don't even have to do anything. You'll simply burn more calories, because muscle simply requires more of an energy investment.
Of course, as you can infer, if you build muscle and then leave it alone, over time, the muscle fibers will weaken and you'll lose that wonderful calorie-burning factory. But that's no problem, because all you need to do is build and maintain healthy muscle.
Yet the important thing for you to remember is that once you start building muscle - through any kind of strength training - your body will itself start burning more calories. It has to; even while you sleep, or go to a movie, or read a book. It's like putting your calorie-burning (catabolism) program on auto-pilot.
So don't let a little (or even a lot) of extra flab, at the moment, deter you from believing that muscle building is important when it comes to losing weight. And it's an exponential one, too: the more lean muscle you add the more weight you'll lose, the more calories you'll burn simply to maintain that new muscle (and the wonderful cycle goes on and on!).
However when you start building more lean muscle it's possible you'll get smaller and heavier at the same time. Because muscle is a much denser tissue than fat. So it's probably best to toss out the bathroom scale and go by the way you look and the way your clothes fit. The scale can be misleading and discourage you when you're actually 'losing weight' in the form of bodyfat.
by Derek Penycate
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