Lose Weight With Cardio, NOT by Gaining Muscle!

Gaining muscle is not the most effective way to increase your metabolism and lose body fat. Many people are misled into thinking that it is. There are better and more effective ways to burn body fat and lose weight, though. Gaining muscle is good, but won't help you lose weight. Let's take a look at some simple facts.

Having More Body Fat Will Increase Your Metabolism!

Sounds crazy, but it's true. One pound of fat burns two calories per day. It adds up; 10 pounds of fat burns 20 calories, and so on. Now, of course you don't want to gain weight to burn calories, that's ridiculous. But, this just happens to be one of the lesser-known metabolic facts that illustrates how misled people can be. Everything is not quite as it appears!

How Many Calories Are Burned Per Day Per Pound of Muscle?

Muscle burns an additional 6 calories per day. People don't agree on the exact number, but 6 looks like a good average. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has it close to 5 and I've seen other studies where it is a bit higher. Bottom line...muscle doesn't increase your metabolism THAT much.

Let's Put This 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!

How Many Calories Burned to Lose 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.

Combination of Cardio and Diet is Best

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.

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