Are you ready to transform your physique with fat loss? Look no further! In this blog post, we will guide you through the process of building lean muscle for fat loss in a simple and effective manner. Our comprehensive approach will help you achieve remarkable results. Get ready to say goodbye to excess fat and hello to a more sculpted, toned body.
importance of building muscle for fat loss
Muscle and fat have an inverse relationship when it comes to burning calories. While muscle is highly metabolic and encourages the utilization of fat for energy while it rest, fat well technically white fat, actually encourages the body to produce more adipose tissue. When our adipose sites fill with lipids and reach a critical size, young unspecialized cells in our bodies, are stimulated to turn into more fat cell. This increases the total amount of fat on our bodies making it harder to achieve fat loss.
There are many benefits to building muscle when it comes to burning fat. When we engage in resistance training we burn calories not only during the session but for 48 to 72 hours after the session as we repair our muscle tissue. That’s right, you are literally burning fat while you sleep.
Another major benefit to resistance training is that muscle has a very high energy demand. This means simply by having more lean muscle on your body you have a higher metabolic rate meaning you burn more calories while at rest. It may seem too good to be true but it is a fact muscles create fat loss even while you’re just sitting around.
Glucose and fat loss.
When we look at skeletal muscle, it is important to recognize its ability to both burn and store glucose. As you may or may not know, excessive glucose in the system is eventually stored as, you guessed it, fat. Skeletal muscle is second only to the liver and it’s ability to store glucose. When we engage in regular resistance exercise, we utilize the stored glucose that is already in the muscle.
The stored glucose is used and then allows the muscles to take any new glucose from the bloodstream, preventing it from being turned into fat tissue. Think of it like a sponge, as we contract the muscles against resistance we utilize the store glucose as fuel. As we continue to contract the muscle over and over, we utilize all the glucose within that muscle. The muscle tissue is emptied of glucose then sucks it up out of the bloodstream much like a sponge a dry sponge soaks up water. That creates more fat loss via glucose management.
Why weight training is better than cardio for fat loss.
When we talk about cardiovascular exercise, it can be broken down into two major forms. Those forms of cardiovascular exercise are anaerobic and aerobic. Anaerobic cardiovascular exercise is essentially any cardio exercise that elevates your heart rate to a point that you are without enough oxygen to burn fat, and therefore are burning glucose. The other form of cardiovascular activity is called aerobic, or with oxygen. Aerobic activity is when your heart rate is kept low enough that you utilize fat as the primary fuel.
You may have noticed that there are certainly some benefits to cardiovascular activity when it comes to utilizing glucose and creating fat loss, but they pale in comparison to resistance training. One reason for this is that during cardiovascular activity you burn calories only during the activity and potentially for a couple hours after. As mentioned above with resistance training, you burn calories during the activity and 48 to 72 hours after the activity once again meaning you are creating fat loss while you rest.
Another reason resistance training is superior to cardiovascular training for fat loss is that excessive cardiovascular activity actually catabolizes or eats muscle tissue. As you lose muscle tissue, you lose your ability to store and utilize glycogen. As you lose muscle, you lose your advantage for fat loss.
Conclusions For Fat Loss.
I hope the short blog has helped you to see the reasons why weight training is far superior to cardiovascular activity for fat loss. This is not to say that there are not benefits to cardiovascular activity, and that one should avoid it, however, if your goal is fat loss, resistance training is the best choice. It can be challenging to find a place to be consistent with weight training. We suggest becoming a part of a community of like-minded people that share the same goal to support your efforts.
