Increase Muscle to Burn Fat Fast

Most women know that men can lose weight much easier than women do. It’s frustrating to struggle for days, cutting calories and exercising only to lose one pound while your mate skips lunch and drops a hefty five pounds.

You may think that hormones are to blame, as they so often are. However, there is another good reason to explain why men lose weight easier than women. They have more muscle mass! 

The more muscle mass you have, the more efficiently you can burn calories. Men naturally have more muscle than women so they naturally have the advantage when it comes to losing weight. If you want to shift the advantage in your favor, then you need to increase muscle and cut fat. As the muscle mass in your body increases, you will continue to burn more calories and reduce the percent of fat in your body. 

If you want to lose fat, you have to do cardiovascular exercise to burn calories and get your body to start burning the fat that it has in reserve. To burn fat faster, you will need to reduce the calories you are ingesting at the same time you are doing cardiovascular exercises so that you will burn more of the fat your body has in reserve instead of the calories you are currently providing it with.

So, to lose fat you have to do cardiovascular exercises and you need to reduce your calorie intake. So, where does the muscle mass figure in? 

Most exercise programs that you see will have cardiovascular exercise of one type or the other in combination with strength training. Strength training is the type of exercises you do with weights to help you increase muscle. Muscle not only increases your body’s ability to burn calories but it also helps to fill out your skin and make you look more toned and fit when you do lose the extra pounds.

If you look at pictures of those who have lost weight only by dieting as opposed to those who used exercise to help them drop the weight, building muscle makes a lot of difference in how the weight comes off and how you look once it does. 

To increase muscle mass, you will also need to provide the body with the nutrients it needs to build muscle, which is protein. Protein comes from meat, eggs, nuts and seeds, and legumes. When you add meat to your diet to provide your body with protein, always make lean choices. Instead of eating steaks and other red meat that is high in fat, choose from lean poultry and fish that will also provide you with additional nutrients without all of the calories.  

Strength training should be performed three to five times a week to increase muscle and help you lose weight. It can be combined with a cardiovascular program or performed separately. It can be confusing to get started on your own. If you are unsure where to begin, look for a program that is designed to increase muscle mass and burn fat, and try it for a few weeks to make sure you get off to a great start.