Fat burning, muscle is your best ally.
Many people who want to drop a quick 10 pounds of fat head to the gym and jump on the nearest treadmill or stair master. When you talk about losing weight and burning fat , you’re really talking about losing body fat – and cardio is not the only way to burn fat or keep it off.
If you want to sculpt a leaner figure, you need to build muscle while reducing your body fat percentage – what trainers call increasing lean body mass. Aerobic exercise should be part of your fitness regimen, but that’s only part of a solid plan. Here are three reasons why muscle -building resistance training must be part of any comprehensive fitness and weight maintenance strategy.
Fat burning and muscle
Muscle boost your metabolism. You burn most of your calories each day by living – digesting, working, reading thinking. Replacing fat with muscle increases that passive calorie burn. According to the latest research, muscle at rest burns three times the calories of fat at rest. Replace 20 pounds of fat with muscle and burn a extra 80 calories a day just by sitting around. That’s equivalent to losing eight pounds in a year!
Resistance training burns calories. You might not think of weight – lifting session as a major calories burner, but intense resistance training can burn 500 calories in less than an hour. The key to blasting the calories? Rest minimally between sets. Do your reps quickly but safely to increase the aerobic benefits of your lifting, include movements that use as many muscle groups as possible.
Resistance training maintains weight loss. What happens when you do the same elliptical workout for three months? You stop getting results. Your body adapts to the exercise and weight loss comes to a halt. Three varied strength – training sessions per week will keep muscles guessing and growing shoulders and arms on day one, chest, back and core on day three; lower body on day five.
Fat and muscle
Precision Fitness Placentia
1152 E Yorba Linda Blvd
Placentia, CA
714-883-8940