Build Muscle to Burn Fat!
All of the experiences that I've gone through in my quest to get ‘buff' have culminated into a single revelation: Muscle helps burn fat! I've known this scientific fact for years, but for some reason I didn't realize what it meant. It means the more muscle you have on your body the more calories your body burns, including calories from stored body fat! If you want to get rid of the fat on your body, lift weights and build strong active muscles!
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Muscle Facts:
- After puberty your essential muscle growth is over and your muscle starts to deteriorate.
- As you age you lose muscle. “If you don't use it, you lose it.”
- Pregnancy further accelerates muscle loss. The amount of protein your baby needs to develop requires the baby to steal protein (stored in your body as muscle) from you!
- Dieting and aerobic exercise without strength training causes muscle loss .
- Pre-menopausal, menopausal and post menopausal women have lower hormone levels; this causes accelerated muscle loss.
- The Good News:
- Weight training re-builds your lost muscle.
- Women who weight train won't increase their muscle size much, just their muscle density and strength - forget the fear of “bulking up!”
- MUSCLE HELPS BURNS FAT!
Why Muscle is Important:
- It is a significant driving force in your metabolism (how quickly your body burns calories).
- Muscle is an active tissue that is constantly renewing itself and therefore requires energy (calories).
- A source of energy your body utilizes to maintain your muscle is stored body fat.
- Muscle gives shape to your body.
- Muscle helps you perform optimally as a woman.
The more muscle you have on your body the more the more calories you burn and the more stored body fat you burn.
Get Rid of the “Scale” Mentality:
We are often programmed to think we have to weigh a certain amount to be happy. We say to ourselves, “If I could only weigh what I did in high school”. You need to get rid of that scale mentality. Who cares how much you weigh? The most athletic bodies are often considered overweight if you place them on the standard height/weight chart. Why? Because muscle is so dense that it weighs much more than fat. Muscle also holds about 60% more water than fat tissue, causing muscular people to weigh much more than their “skinny fat” counterparts. Since muscle weighs more than fat, don't think that you have to be a certain weight. What you should be most concerned about is your muscle mass percentage and your body fat percentage. That is what it all comes down to: your body composition. How much muscle and fat is on your body? Does it jiggle and wiggle? Or are you firm and tight? To be buff you need to have a high percentage of muscle and a lower percentage of body fat. That way you can see those sexy muscles your fat is hiding!
How Can I Build Muscle?
Muscle in women deteriorates at almost every stage of life. This is why we must weight train!
My weight training philosophy is based on:
- The Basic Big three;
- Challenge;
- Change.
The Basic Big Three:
What do I mean by the big three? There are 3 large/primary muscle groups that comprise the body and my lifting program is centered on them. It's important to focus weight training efforts here since these groups comprise the majority of the muscle mass on our bodies.
The basic big three are: legs, chest and back.
1. Legs (and butt)
Leg muscles are the biggest, strongest muscles in our body and you must not neglect exercising these potential “fat burning furnaces”. A majority of women don't realize how strong and powerful their legs can be without getting bulky. I understand that most women have a fear of lifting with their legs because they often carry a higher amount of fat in their legs and therefore fear adding bulk to their lower half through weight training.
However, as women, we don't have the levels of testosterone necessary to build big bulky muscles! So, don't fear that if you lift weights with your legs you will make them significantly bigger. Initially, a small amount of muscle growth will occur before you start loose your fat on top of and inside of your leg muscles, and you may notice a slight size increase, but this is temporary. You will soon notice how your legs gain new shape, firmness and a leaner appearance. All of which is caused by these muscles becoming more active and therefore helping the body to burn calories, and stored body fat!
Let's talk about the area that all women are concerned about: the butt. It must be dealt with head on. Meaning you must make a huge concentrated effort to reshape the behind that inactivity and age has destroyed. This means squats and lunges - lots of them and with weight. No amount of donkey kicks, step-ups, and abduction or adduction exercises will do the significant work that must be done in order to reshape your backside. These exercises are helpful initially and in complementary sense to a leg weight training program, but alone they will not do much. The legs and butt are strong muscles so in order to change their looks we have to challenge them. This requires using heavier weights and intense contractions.
Most modes of cardio or aerobic exercise utilize the legs. These exercises are great for toning the muscles of the legs that are used during these aerobic sessions. However, they don't hit all of the muscles in the legs and butt; for the most part they don't build them. Instead they are what we call catabolic. This means they lead to the breakdown of these muscles. For a real-life example, look at marathon runners. They look sickly. They are some of the most aerobically in shape people and they do a lot of working out with their legs, but their muscles are tiny! So let's learn from this. Aerobic exercise is very important for overall health, stress relief and conditioning the muscles we have, but not for building muscle.
2. Chest:
I don't mean your mammary glands. I am talking about your pectorals; the muscles all women need to embrace. I've been there. Pregnancy and breast-feeding do nasty things to this area! The look of a woman's chest goes beyond the mammary tissue and lies underneath, in the pectoral muscles. Remember what I said about pregnancy robbing our bodies of muscle…This means the muscle that once ‘lifted' us is now gone and it too needs to be rebuilt. If you want to give yourself a ‘natural breast lift', build up your chest! It will not only help with sagging, but the muscle you build will also boost your metabolism!
3. Back:
Oh, I forgot about you back there! Most women are absolutely unaware of the huge potential calorie burning muscles they have on their backs. Our backs are full of muscles. There are tons of them holding our spine, ribs and shoulders in place. These muscles are very important to our health. How often do we hear about back and neck pain? Unfortunately it is rampant. I truly believe that weak back muscles cause much of the pain. Lifting with your back requires proper form and extreme focus on the muscles you are working.
Challenging Yourself:
Your body is very smart. If challenged to the limits of its capabilities, it realizes the need to rebuild itself even stronger. Hence, when faced with that same challenge again, the body will be able to perform at a higher capacity. This is the key to understanding your weight training program.
You must find a way to challenge your muscles. Lifting the same weight every time you perform an exercise will maintain what muscle you have, but build more. I don't know many people who like spending an hour in the gym to stay exactly the same. We all crave to improve ourselves. So we must challenge our muscles by lifting weights that are challenging. There is nothing complicated about it. Just make sure you find yourself slightly challenged by your lifting program.
Change it Up:
Change is good. Your muscles get used to the same thing. When there's no reason for the body to change, it won't! Too much of the same thing causes your muscles to not respond just as it causes you to not want to do your boring workout. Don't be afraid to change:
- Try some new exercises;
- Change the number of sets and reps of your exercises;
- Increase or decrease your rest time between sets and workouts;
- Change the order of your exercises.
Just remember to keep the basic big three muscle groups as the foundation to your weight training program. Change will help you stay focused and your muscles will keep working hard to burn more calories and fat!
Of course, proper diet and supplementation are also important to any weight training regimen.
Here are some supplements that I have used in my quest to build fat burning muscles:
BSN Nitrix (NO2) - Helpful for muscle growth.
Dymatize L-Glutamine - Aids in muscle growth and recovery.
Universal Nutrition Gaba - Potentiates growth hormone which aids in muscle growth and recovery.
It works if you work it,
Take care and GET BUFF!
xoxoxo~Michelle Berger
To learn more about Michelle and the online personal training/coaching programs she offers, please visit her website:
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