Do you exercise regularly in hopes of ridding yourself of excess weight but your excess weight doesn’t budge? You’re in good company. Thousands of people exercise daily under the mistaken belief that all exercise is the same, therefore all results are the same.
The reality is, nothing could be further from the truth. Although any form of exercise is better than no exercise, if weight loss is your objective and you’ve put all your efforts into aerobic activity, you have, for the most part, been wasting your time.
Aerobic exercises employ low exertion movements. You’ll burn calories during the hour or two you perform, but when the exercise stops so does the calorie burn. Exercise long enough this way and your body will acclimate itself to the process to ensure your muscles are adequately stocked with glucogen so that it does not have to tap into your reserves of body fat despite the fact that you stick to your workout schedule religiously.
An entirely different approach needs to be adopted if you hope to take off that excess weight and keep it off permanently.
It’s metabolic exercising – the kind that raises the body’s metabolism and forces your body to burn fat all day long that’s required.
Muscle tissue is the real secret weapon in the fight against flab. Rather than focusing on low-impact type aerobic activity, you must add muscle to your mix.
The path to an increased metabolic rate involves strength training – the kind of activity that builds lean muscle. Adding muscle may sound counterproductive if your goal is to take off extra pounds. However, it is muscle tissue that is active tissue and requires fuel to do its work. Even when it is not flexing it needs to burn fuel to stay warm and be ready to perform when called upon at a moment’s notice.
Fat tissue on the other hand, has a much lower capacity to keep itself warm and is not able to perform actions that expend energy through moving mass around which is what muscles do.
That’s why ten pounds of lean muscle tissue is far preferred over ten pounds of fat tissue. The former is going to burn fat all day long while the latter just sits there doing nothing. How much energy does a pound of muscle consume? Something on the order of 10 calories daily. Not much but a whole lot more than can be attributed to a pound of body fat.
This results in an extra ten pounds of lean muscle tissue uses up about 100 calories daily – equivalent to about 1 pound of fat each month. This is the rate at which calories are consumed if you are sitting all day long. Adding physical activity to your day the number of calories each pound of muscle consumes each day could be anywhere from two to five times as much compared to sitting still all-day long.
Although the numbers don’t sound large enough to make a difference to your weight loss goals, over time this effect does indeed lead to a real change in body composition (muscle to fat ratio).
If you are serious about gaining muscle, then add proper strength training to your workouts, you’ll add far more than ten pounds of muscle to your frame, you’ll put those fat burning furnaces to use! Adding muscle to your frame offers a great number of added health benefits as well, not the least of which include a reduction in the likelihood that you will suffer back pain and high blood pressure, as well as decreased sexual performance in later life.
If you are searching for a weight-loss program that works without the addition of pills, vitamins, shakes or prescription drugs, if you don’t have time for hours of walking or jogging and you’ve tried every fad diet only to end up heavier…it’s time to get started on a program that works…
I have a simple set of eBooks and one is devoted to strength training exercise which you can do in a gym or at home.
The books can be seen here:
Fitness For You
For more tools and resources from Carolyn Hansen to assist you in attaining your goals and achieving the success you desire in life, please visit:
