While some fat is necessary to maintain a healthy body, the ability to pinch greater than an inch on your waist indicates the need for weight loss. Excess fat makes you more likely to suffer cancer and heart attack, as well as other dangerous conditions. Muscle mass contributes to your body weight, although excess muscle --- typically gained through weightlifting --- benefits your health and aids fat reduction. Muscle uses calories faster than fat, even while you sleep, according to the Merck Manuals Medical Library. Understand the truth about how muscle burns calories to ensure your well-being.
Your Body & Calories
While excess fat makes you more susceptible to arthritis and heart disease, an abundance of muscle rewards your body in a variety of ways, including a greater ability to maintain a healthy figure. Although your body obtains calories, or energy, from fat, muscle tissue also burns calories for your body but at a faster rate. The President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports reports that muscle uses calories so quickly that after a workout, your body's metabolic rate stays elevated for longer periods. The raised metabolism ensures you continue burning calories --- even during periods of inactivity or sleep.
Vanishing Muscle
Although muscle helps you burns calories more efficiently than fat, you'll need to exercise in order to stop a natural loss of muscle that takes place as you age. People with low levels of muscle are more likely to gain harmful body fat that often leads to obesity. Doctors recommend strength training as the best method to both increase muscle and melt fat. Weightlifting is the most popular strength training exercise, but a workout that includes resistance tubes --- as well as pullups, pushups and squats --- also build muscle. While strength training enhances your power to burn calories, results on the scale may not be dramatic since muscle mass weighs more than fat but does not endanger your health.
Fat Burning Timeline
Your doctor can determine the best strength training regimen for your overall health, although fitness experts usually recommend the activity on three days every week in order to gain muscle and burn fat. Limit your workouts to between 20 and 30 minutes, which typically delivers results after several weeks of consistent activity. Spacing your strength training apart at least 24 hours is essential since your muscles need time to recover, although aerobic exercise on your days off allows you to continue burning calories. Consider activities like swimming, jogging, tennis or bike riding for at least 30 minutes.
Additional Muscle Benefits
A commitment to increasing your muscle mass enhances your body's fat-burning ability but also improves your overall health. Athletes that lift weights typically have higher levels of endurance, as well as better concentration and focus. Increased muscle protects your bones, tendons and joints, so you'll have less chance of short-term injuries. You'll also benefit from a reduced likelihood for serious health problems like high cholesterol and osteoporosis --- a disease that deteriorates your bones.
References
- President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports: Exercise and Weight Control
- Merck Manuals.com: Starting an Exercise Program
- KidsHealth.org: Strength Training
- Cleveland Clinic: Exercise and Weight Control
- MayoClinic.com: Strength Training: Get Stronger, Leaner, Healthier
- MayoClinic.com: Aerobic Exercise: Top 10 Reasons To Get Physical
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