Health and Fitness

Want a sure-fire way to help your body rid itself of unsightly body fat, better yet, keep it off for good?

Learn to accelerate your body’s metabolism. One way to do this is by incorporating resistance training (weight-training) into your routine. That’s because the more muscle mass you have, you more body fat you will lose, even at rest!

Your metabolic rate determines how your body utilizes calories throughout the day for energy.

Metabolism is simply the speed in which your body burns through food. It is the conversion of digested nutrients into components for energy or building muscle.

Having an accelerated metabolism means that we will burn more calories often because our body will be utilizing and burning off food more often. One way to accelerate our metabolism is by increasing our amount of lean muscle tissue in the body.

Muscle helps speed up your metabolism. Since muscle is metabolically active tissue, the more you have the more calories you burn. This is why resistance training is so vital to long-term weight loss.

By the way, long term weight loss is really the only safe and effective way to lose weight. Quick weight loss is not long-term weight loss.

When you add lean muscle tissue to your body composition, you increase the amount of calories your body burns and you also increase your metabolic rate. Muscle requires energy to maintain and it gets that energy from burning calories. So building muscle is one of the best long-term weight loss tools you can use.

There are studies that suggest that you only expend about 10% of your daily calories through exercise, the rest is expended through your body’s metabolic functions. So again, the more lean muscle tissue, the more calories your body will burn for energy throughout the day while going about your daily routine.

Now, the quickest and easiest way to build muscle through resistance training is to perform your resistance training with less repetitions and a little more weight.

It would stand to reason that if you could lift 100 pounds 10 times, you could lift more weight than that if you had to do less than 10 times. I incorporate lower reps into my clients workout programs and the results are an increase in lean muscle.

Over time, this increase in lean mass will help accelerate fat-loss by dipping into stored body fat as a source of fuel. Losing body fat, remember, simply comes from expending more calories than you consume.

Also, progressively strive to lift more weight when the weight you are using becomes too easy. If it’s too easy, you will not benefit from it very much.

The combination of resistance training with supportive eating throughout the day will assist your body in adding lean muscle to its frame.

This lean muscle will increase the amount of calories you burn off throughout the day. So to lose fat, hit the weights and build muscle!

Shawn LeBrun is a personal trainer, natural bodybuilder, and everyday average guy. See how he can help you build muscle, lose fat, and get in the best shape of your life. Shawn Lebrun Fitness