Burn Fat By Building Muscle

You’ve probably heard before that building muscle helps burn fat because muscles burn more calories than fat. If you haven’t, then now you know. This explains why people who have more muscle mass can eat more and still not gain fat, their muscles will burn off the calories they eat at a faster rate than someone weighing the same, but having more fat.

Therefore, while lifting weights may not be the first thing to cross your mind when you think about weight loss, building muscle mass will do more than just make you look huge. It will help you burn calories, therefore burn fat and even lose weight. Although you may not lose weight. Carrying more muscle makes you heavier as one pound of muscle is much smaller than one pound of fat in volume. This means that you may look toned and burn fat while having more muscle and weighing the same as another person who carries significantly more fat.

Anyway, how do building lean muscle and burning fat go hand in hand? Let’s check closer at muscle types and fat types.

Muscle types

Humans have two types of muscle: slow twitch fibers, and fast twitch fibers. You use the slow twitch muscle fibers when it comes to endurance. Such as running long distances, or having low impact workouts such as Zumba.

There are also fast twitch muscle fibers that we use for fast-paced movements such as when sprinting or squat jumps. These are the tires that will tire faster and will require longer recovery time than the slow twitch muscle fibers. The slow twitch ones will also stay near the same size after exercising, as opposed to fast twitch muscle fibers.

That’s why, when you work out in the gym, you work the fast twitch fibers, which provide serious muscle definition. These are the muscles that you focus your efforts on when you want serious muscle mass. Yet, you’ll get the most benefits when you combine both of them.

Fat types

When it comes to fat, there are more types of fat. You may have heard of ‘stubborn’ fat. This is the ‘white fat’ AKA subcutaneous fat. This is the type of fat that easily attaches to your hips, belly, butt, and thighs – the one that is hardest to get rid of, and the one everyone wishes to get rid of. This type of fat is the body’s largest energy reserve. That’s why it is so hard to get rid of. The body is naturally made to keep hold of it so burning it is pretty challenging.

There’s also the ‘visceral’ fat which hides away beneath the white fat around your midsection. This is dangerous fat if it’s too much. But it is also dangerous not to have enough of it. It protects your vital organs such as the liver and intestines, but too much of it will increase the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and cancer.

There’s also the ‘brown’ fat. It is the ‘good’ type of fat that you would want to have more of. Brown fat is the one that burns calories instead of storing them. When you’re training hard in the gym, it encourages white fat to temporarily turn into another form of fat that will burn calories – beige fat.

How many calories does one pound of muscle burn?

As said, building muscle will burn fat, which basically means that it is the muscle we carry that will burn that fat. So, it is obvious that you may wonder how many calories does muscle burn? In the past, we used to think that 5 pounds of muscle would burn 250 calories a day. Unfortunately, that’s a myth. Instead, one pound of muscle will burn about 6 to 7 calories a day. While it may not seem much, it does add up.

For example, an average person would carry about 50-80 pounds of lean muscle tissue. If you’re a muscular guy, you would likely carry at least 100 pounds of lean muscle and more. This means that instead of burning just 300-500 calories a day, you may burn 600 to 1,000 calories a day! Add up per week and it would be a 2,000-4,000 difference per week. Since one pound of fat is 3,500 calories – you’d burn off about one pound of fat more per week!

Anyway, keep in mind that we can’t say the exact number. Different research uses different ways to check metabolic changes post-exercise. There are also a lot of factors that influence our metabolism. Sex, age, activity level, and fitness level – they all matter. That’s why no one answer fits everyone.

Building Muscle and Burning Fat Relationship

Similar to your phone requiring energy to function, your muscles require energy too. Your car requires energy too, and you provide that energy by pumping gas into it. You provide energy to your phone by charging it. So how do you provide energy to your muscles? You eat! Food is like gas for your car. Your body turns that food into energy.

Our body is using calories every single second. It requires calories for normal bodily functions. Your lungs require calories (energy) to breathe, your heart requires energy to pump blood, and so on. Therefore, we spend calories even when sleeping. Nonetheless, the majority of the energy goes into powering our muscles. While you obviously tend to spend more in the gym when working your muscles, you’re in the gym only one hour a day. But the muscles need energy to walk, keep balance, the heart pumps blood, and so on. That’s why we tend to spend most of our energy on lean muscle when we simply go about our day-to-day business.

Remember I earlier said that white fat is the body’s largest energy reserve? Well, your body takes energy from carbohydrates (quick energy, 4 calories per gram) and from fat (9 calories per gram). The body tends to take energy from carbs when you work your muscles in the gym, as it needs a lot of fuel fast (and carbs provide quick energy). But when you go for general everyday tasks (or slow paced cardio), the body will look for fat reserves. That’s why I said that it is best to combine both types of muscles in your workout regimen.

More About Building Muscle and Burning Fat

Considering that slow-paced cardio burns more fat but intense strength training gains more muscle, you may have a dilemma – should you strength train or do cardio when trying to cut fat? As said, you should do both. Some people leave either one out, but that’s a huge mistake. The combination of both is the best when it comes to achieving amazing results.

When having extra muscle (doing strength training) you will burn extra calories by simply having those extra muscles, you burn calories during the strength training, and you change your metabolism for better. Moreover, there’s the afterburn effect (when the body continues to burn calories post-workout). Your overall health and fitness will benefit from strength training. But slow-paced cardio will further improve your results, encouraging fat burning.

In the end, not too many people think about building muscle (strength training) when it comes to burning fat and weight loss. Most think that cardio is enough. However, research suggests that keeping hold of muscle mass and gaining lean tissue as we age will help us a lot to stay away from gaining excess weight. Strength training will also help:

• Develop a great body composition, keeping your healthy and giving your body shape
• Burn extra calories due to larger lean muscle tissues
• Provide an afterburn effect even after your strength training
• Improve your coordination and balance
• At preventing lean muscle mass loss
• Keep the bones and connective tissues strong

How to Burn Fat by Building Muscle?

Now, the million bucks question – how to lose fat and tone muscle?

You’ve probably heard about the “fat-burning zone” by now. Well, this zone is real and you need to work into it to burn fat. It will also help gain muscle. You should think of this zone as the level of intensity at which you’re exercising. That’s about 50 to 65% of your maximum heart rate.

This is the zone that sits just below the point where your body tends to switch to burning carbs instead of fat. Your aim is to burn fat, not carbs, that’s why you shouldn’t aim for maximum heart rate exercises. You won’t be able to do them for too long anyway. Instead, you aim to burn more calories, which you do when exercising for longer. The more calories you burn during your workout, the more your body will be forced to burn fat and aid muscle recovery.

So, how do you burn fat and build lean muscle while maximizing your results? There are various lifestyle changes that you must implement in your regimen if you want to build muscle and burn fat fast. I am going to share a few of them.

Exercise earlier

Research suggests that morning exercise will help burn up to 20% more body fat! So as long as you really want to say goodbye to those love handles, you better start waking up early and exercising earlier. The secret here is that your body’s internal processes are “working” better in the morning. Moreover, eating breakfast after your workout will encourage your body to burn fat, as it has less glycogen (energy) from carbs to eat through.

Get more rest

By getting more rest I am definitely not saying that you should scroll through social media at the gym (pro tip: don’t, especially when blocking equipment). What I’m trying to say is that you need to get a decent amount of sleep every single day. You should aim for at least 7 hours of high-quality sleep every day. If you’re often resistance training, your muscles need even more rest with some requiring to sleep as much as 10 hours a day. If you run on poor sleep, your body’s levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) increase. This is the hormone that ruins your efforts in the gym and makes your body keep holding onto fat stores more, making it harder to burn fat. It is also during sleep that your body secretes most anabolic hormones that help you gain muscle such as Testosterone and HGH.

Follow the 1:3 rule

This is a relatively simple rule that can help you a lot. This rule involves – workout for one hour, three times a week, that’s very simple. If you can exercise even more that’s great, but make sure you’re not overtraining. Instead, you can work out 3-4 times a week and be active by taking longer walks. Stick to your workout schedule and ensure you keep on pushing. Also, do it hard and consistently. Throw yourself into a beast mode three times a week rather than barely working out five times a week.

Work harder

If you’re searching for ways to burn fat and build muscle then your best bet is to lift weights and then do bodyweight exercises to the point you can barely make it back home. You may have heard about lifting to failure. That’s not a myth, it actually does work. Working to failure will provide your muscle fibers with something they need to keep on growing. That’s when they actually start growing.

Get enough rest

Yeah, you would want to go hard at the gym and maximize fat burning and the amount of muscle you build. Nonetheless, it is important to remember that you also need time to recover too. Your muscles need to recover, your nervous system, your mind, and so on. You need to switch up workouts that challenge different muscle groups on different days to provide enough recovery. The recovery is essential for the muscles to build stronger. It is actually during recovery when ‘magic’ happens and we gain muscle.

Go for the correct diet

Should I even say it? As long as you want to burn fat and build muscle, you will need the correct diet. Pay attention to what you eat, how much you eat, and when you eat. For example, being smart about your post-exercise snack means a lot. If you would have a combo of high quality protein and complex carbs within a 2 hour window post workout you would significantly aid muscle growth. The carbs help replenish glycogen stores while the amino acids in the protein will aid muscle repair.

Cycle Gear to Burn Fat by Building Muscle

The problem with burning fat by building muscle is that you need to eat in a calorie surplus to build muscle, which can gain some fat along the way, yet you need to eat in a calorie deficit to burn fat, which can make you lose some lean muscle tissue along the way. Due to this, it can be pretty hard to keep your muscles while you try to shed fat.

However, you can make it all much easier if you Cycle Gear. At Cycle-Gear.to you can buy the best quality cutting products for sale. We work with the best manufacturers ensuring you save money and get the best quality. You can get products that cut through fat fast and protect your lean muscle mass. They will help reduce fatigue and lean muscle tissue loss.

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