Build Muscle to Lose Fat: Will it Work?
The case for building muscle to lose fat seems to be a straightforward one.
For each and every pound of muscle you put on, your rate of metabolism will rise by between 50 and 100 calories each day.
As a result, putting on only a few pounds of lean muscle is going to burn as many calories as running 25 miles per week.
All while you’re sleeping, seated at your desk or resting on the sofa.
Or is it? I’m not so sure that building muscle to lose fat is a very good idea…
The primary problem is that muscle doesn’t burn off 50-100 calories per pound.
In actual fact, research shows that the resting metabolic rate of muscle is really a lot less than the majority think – close to six calories per pound.
I should also explain that fat is much more than simply lifeless tissue. It produces proteins such as leptin and cytokines, which will alter your metabolism. Fat has a rate of metabolism close to 2 calories for every pound.
If you were to get rid of a few pounds of fat and replace it with the same amount of muscle, your resting metabolism would go up by less than ten calories daily. That’s not enough to have any kind of significant influence on fat burning.
The approximations of the resting metabolism of muscle I’ve just provided make one particular assumption – a constant rate of protein turnover.
However, strength training will speed up protein turnover (which refers to a rise in the speed of protein synthesis and breakdown) in the days and nights after exercise.
In other words, although the rate of metabolism of muscle at rest isn’t as high as some individuals believe, the metabolism of muscle while it’s recuperating means that people who have more lean muscle mass are going to use up more calories inside the post-training phase.
Another issue is that you’d have to build a huge amount of muscle mass to have a significant impact on your rate of metabolism.
To expend an additional ten thousand calories every thirty days – enough to shed nearly three pounds of fat – you’d have to build more than 50 pounds of muscle mass.
That’s a lot more than the average joe might build throughout their exercise life span.
In other words, the idea of building muscle to lose fat is really a flawed one.
However that doesn’t imply that lifting weights is unnecessary if you’re trying to drop body fat. Far from it. Lifting weights is going to improve your body composition in a couple of significant ways.
For starters, resistance training can burn calories (and fat). Not just during your workout, but – given you exercise intensely – after it’s finished too.
Next, if you don’t do some kind of weight training while you’re going on a diet, much of the weight you shed can come from muscle mass in addition to fat.
It’s also worth mentioning that the amount of weight you lose is significantly less significant in comparison with where that lost fat originates from. If you drop ten pounds of fat while buildind 3 pounds of muscle, your weight on the weighing scales is only going to have gone down by seven pounds. But you’ll appear thirteen pounds different.
So what sort of weight training should you be engaging in?
An effective weight training program really should be based upon squats, deadlifts, rows, chin-ups (or pulldowns) and presses using heavy(ish) weights and low (5-8) reps. Use whatever resistance is available – barbells, kettlebells, fixed resistance machines, or perhaps your own bodyweight – to get the job done.