If you're trying to burn body fat, you've heard that "gaining muscle burns more calories.
" This is a very common mis-perception in the health and fitness world.
While it's not completely false, it's basically a huge exaggeration and needs to be explained a little better.
Here are some reasons why this is not a great approach to burning body fat.
Having More Body Fat Will Increase Your Metabolism! Believe it or not, this is actually true.
Because..
..
...
a pound of fat in your body burns two calories in a day.
Therefore, gaining 10 pounds of fat means burning 20 extra calories per day.
Yes, this sounds silly, and you certainly wouldn't want to gain fat just to burn those extra 20 calories, but it's a technical fact to consider.
Muscle Burns More Than Fat, Right? Technically, this is true.
A pound of muscle burns approximately 6 extra calories per day, but it depends on who you ask, opinions vary in the medical world.
Basically, yes, it burns more, but not a whole lot more.
Putting Things Into Perspective The math is simple.
If you lost 20 pounds of fat, you would burn 40 fewer calories in a day.
If you gained 10 pounds of muscle, you would burn 60 more calories in a day.
With this type of body change, we're talking about a total of 20 extra calories per day.
This is not that impressive, really.
Even if you lost 20 pounds of fat and gained 20 pounds of muscle, still only 80 extra calories burned in a day.
Big deal! What Do You Have To Do To Burn a Pound of Fat? You might not like this little tidbit.
You will need to burn 3,500 calories to lose a pound of fat.
At a rate of 20 extra calories per day, this is never going to make a dent in your overall body composition.
So, the incredible amounts of time spent trying to gain muscle can be spent differently for better results.
This "gaining muscle" approach to fitness is not all it's cracked up to be.
The Only Direct Way to Fat Loss is Burn More and Take in Fewer Calories Hard cardio can easily burn 600 calories.
If you are not trying to build muscle at the same time, you can also reduce your daily caloric intake by 600 calories.
By doing this, you will maintain the muscle you have and continue to lose weight.
Do the math: this combination can burn 1,200 calories per day! Now, while this is grossly oversimplified, the facts are there.
Compared with the body composition calculations above for gaining muscle, this is 60 times as many calories burned.
Cardio and Diet are Better for Body Definition (Maybe Not 60 Times, Though...
) So many variables are involved, including the extra calories burned during lifting.
The point is, gaining muscle is not the best or most direct way to get your body better.
To burn fat, you have to focus on burning more calories.
Cardio workouts are the quickest and easiest way to do this.
Gaining muscle is still good, but not an effective way to burn fat.
" This is a very common mis-perception in the health and fitness world.
While it's not completely false, it's basically a huge exaggeration and needs to be explained a little better.
Here are some reasons why this is not a great approach to burning body fat.
Having More Body Fat Will Increase Your Metabolism! Believe it or not, this is actually true.
Because..
..
...
a pound of fat in your body burns two calories in a day.
Therefore, gaining 10 pounds of fat means burning 20 extra calories per day.
Yes, this sounds silly, and you certainly wouldn't want to gain fat just to burn those extra 20 calories, but it's a technical fact to consider.
Muscle Burns More Than Fat, Right? Technically, this is true.
A pound of muscle burns approximately 6 extra calories per day, but it depends on who you ask, opinions vary in the medical world.
Basically, yes, it burns more, but not a whole lot more.
Putting Things Into Perspective The math is simple.
If you lost 20 pounds of fat, you would burn 40 fewer calories in a day.
If you gained 10 pounds of muscle, you would burn 60 more calories in a day.
With this type of body change, we're talking about a total of 20 extra calories per day.
This is not that impressive, really.
Even if you lost 20 pounds of fat and gained 20 pounds of muscle, still only 80 extra calories burned in a day.
Big deal! What Do You Have To Do To Burn a Pound of Fat? You might not like this little tidbit.
You will need to burn 3,500 calories to lose a pound of fat.
At a rate of 20 extra calories per day, this is never going to make a dent in your overall body composition.
So, the incredible amounts of time spent trying to gain muscle can be spent differently for better results.
This "gaining muscle" approach to fitness is not all it's cracked up to be.
The Only Direct Way to Fat Loss is Burn More and Take in Fewer Calories Hard cardio can easily burn 600 calories.
If you are not trying to build muscle at the same time, you can also reduce your daily caloric intake by 600 calories.
By doing this, you will maintain the muscle you have and continue to lose weight.
Do the math: this combination can burn 1,200 calories per day! Now, while this is grossly oversimplified, the facts are there.
Compared with the body composition calculations above for gaining muscle, this is 60 times as many calories burned.
Cardio and Diet are Better for Body Definition (Maybe Not 60 Times, Though...
) So many variables are involved, including the extra calories burned during lifting.
The point is, gaining muscle is not the best or most direct way to get your body better.
To burn fat, you have to focus on burning more calories.
Cardio workouts are the quickest and easiest way to do this.
Gaining muscle is still good, but not an effective way to burn fat.