There is no straight forward one size fits all method for a healthy weight loss diet. What is left over after eating right is exercise. Whether you are doing cardio or anaerobic exercise such as weight training toning your body, the problem of burning fat and gaining muscle remains intertied with gaining muscle.
Does gaining muscle help me burn body fat?
After going on a diet it is common to focus on your weight and then expecting amazing transformation right before your eyes just by following the rules set out by your dieting plan for success. In reality, your weight is not the only measure of success slimming down.
Another way to burn body fat is to engage your diet and exercise program by putting on muscles allowing you to drop pounds of fat the healthy way. Although putting on muscle, temporarily increases the amount you way, in the long run, it's the best way to slim down beautifully while promoting stability helping you find a comfortable weight.
In this healthy Slism, we going into discourse on how to lose weight and gain muscles that is healthy weight loss. Here you will find a treasure trove of diet tips to kick of you exercise program with great cardio and training advice alike.
Quick Tips to Burn Fat Exercising
- Relationship between muscle and fat
- Put on muscle to slim down your body
- Exercises to burn fat and boost metabolism
Build Muscle… Burn Fat! - How to Burn Fat and Gain Muscle
When on a diet exercising versus only relying on calorie restrictions, your body fat percentage my drop without change in your weight. Often times, you may find your weight on the rise instead. This is very common when dieting in this manner. As you will see, there is nothing to worry about if you just give it time.
In the above case, your body fat drops but as a result you muscles mass increases making it appear as if you've gained weight.
The reason why this is so common is due to the fact that muscle is heavier than fat. This is why it is important to find other metrics to track the progress of your diet such as body fat and physical conditioning other than how many pounds you weight.
FAT DENSITY (Softness < Hardness) MUSCLE DENSITY
The part of your body other than fat is not soft but hard also called your lean body mass (LBM). The reason why even as you lose body fat your weight remains the same is due to the difference in density between your fat and muscle.
Fat Density is 0.9g/mL, whereas Lean Mass Density is 1.1g/mL. Now you can see why muscle weighs more than fat.
From what we know about the density of lean mass versus fat, here are 2 things we know that always hold true.
- If two people have the same body size, then the person with more lean muscle mass is going to be heavier.
- Under the same weight, the person who is leaner will appear slimmer.
For example…
Consider a woman weighing 122 pounds with 30 percent body fat. In this case, the number of pounds for this person can be easily calculated as 122×0.3=36.6lbs. That means she has a lean body mass of 122-36.6=85.4lbs.
Now you turn to take weight loss even further by dropping 9 pounds of fat. What you notice is that your weight didn't change despite losing body fat. In this case, while you were losing body fat, your lean body mass increased by the same amount concurrently.
Due to the fact that there were no changes in your weight, you may get down thinking that your diet is not going as planned. Just so you know you are doing the right thing, let's go over how you can figure out if you are getting slimmer or not.
Going back to the second statement we made early leaner people will appear slimmer; let's take another look as what it means to be slim breaking out some math using density.
Before
Body Density = 16.5/0.9+38.5/1.1=51.6L
After
Body Density = 12.5/0.9+42.5/1.1=51.26L
Note that calculations are carried out in grams. The same can be done for pounds with proper unit conversion.
We find out is despite not losing weight, you look 350mL thinner in terms of volume. What you take home with you is that it's possible to get slim without actually losing weight.
Slim Down While Putting On Muscles…
Body fat and muscle density are interrelated. You may know by now that being leaner is being slimmer but that's not the only benefits of muscles in your diet promoting healthy weight loss.
Putting On Muscle Boosts Your Metabolism
In order to hope for slimming down without your diet taking a toll on your body, boosting your metabolism increasing the energy your body burns at rest is dire.
Our bodies are made up of many parts which keep us alive and kicking. On part of your body is your metabolism. It may not an organ but just as important to understand. In addition to helping you burn off calories doing talks like regulating your body heat, your metabolism has a larger role than you may think.
It is said that your basal metabolism makes up for as much as 70% the energy expenditures that your needs to function properly, not including the amount of energy you burn that is based on activity level. In addition, it is said that around 40% of this energy is taken from fat and used by your muscles.
By increasing the amount of lean muscle mass on your body you effectively boost your metabolism increasing the amount of energy you burn off whether you exercise or not. This makes it easy to maintain your weight and slim down when you want to.
Avoid Putting On Too Much Muscle…
The first thing you want to get out of the way in slimming down is burning off excess body fat increase your lean body mass. However, for ladies especially, building muscle seems like the wrong way to go about it when you are just looking to slim down.
If you find yourself putting on more muscle than expected, it may be the right time to look back and even revise your training method. If you exercise plan requires heavy lifting in conjunction with increased protein intake, then you may want to take a step back and reflect on your training for a while.
Although increasing lean body fat is not a problem, when you are failing to drop body fat then the chances that you are going in the right direction grows slim.
So what diet method is best if you are thinking about increasing lean muscle mass dropping body fat without putting on too much muscle?
How to Diet and Exercise without Going All Macho
There are 2 ways to exercise to consider when thinking about training your muscles, which are aerobic exercise and anaerobic exercise. Depending on the type of exercise you choose to do, different types of muscles are affected, namely slow twitch and fast twitch muscles.
In particular, aerobic exercise helping you to train mostly slow twitch muscles around your body makes it possible to slim down without putting on unwanted muscles mass keeping your womanly figure. For areas you want to tone tightening up loose skin doing high-rep light weight training is recommended.
The slow twitch muscles you use when doing aerobic exercise are less likely to get sore and swell up than fast twitch muscles. In addition aerobic exercise carried out over long periods of time has a fat burning effect especially advantageous if you are trying to slim down.
Doing aerobic exercises such as walking or swimming help you slim down beautifully while boosting muscular strength. Being able to put on slimmer muscle while making it easy to lose body fat is the one stone hits two birds of dieting, here are some aerobic exercises that you may want to consider.
Walking | Jogging | Water Walking |
Circuit Training | Aqua Aerobics | Swimming |
On the other hand you may be looking for a way to train your quick twitch muscles doing anaerobic exercise. Keep in mind that doing heavy lifting is not going to help you slim down your figure. However, if you are looking to boost your metabolism this may be just right for you.
Weight Training | Tube Exercise | Calisthenics |
For practical purposes, you are going to get the best results through dieting eating right and exercising combining both anaerobic exercises and aerobic exercise to boost your metabolism helping you get the body you want.