Muscle For Health

This is a familiar belief which many people consider. When I started lifting weights my friends all said "but when you cease lifting weights all the muscle you have put on will turn to fat and you will look horrifying."

The fact is muscle can't turn into fat and fat can't turn into muscle! So their fears were entirely unwarranted. One or two of them said they would never lift weights since they didn't imagine that this belief is entirely untrue.

One of my friends told me the example of a popular body builder who finish exercising and lifting weights and months later his body appeared entirely different: he was about three times as fat and had a lot barely muscle than he had before.

Now what my friend thought was that since he had finish exercising, all the muscle he had built up had turned into fat. Now this is not even practical! Your body save fat for occasions when there's will be a food items shortage and this depends on how much energy it involves, how much you gorge etc..

Your body builds up muscle entirely interdependently of the fat collection operation: your body renew the muscle tissue that you have put to use when lifting weights and doing other anaerobic pursuits and the muscle develops. There is no way fat can turn into muscle and vice verse. What then had really happened with the body builder? Because he was not exercising he lost much of the muscle that he had in the past.

In losing the muscle his body needed a lot fewer calories every day to function. He however did not properly adjust his gorging habits for the change in his metabolic rate (remember to maintain every pound of muscle you will require another 50 calories a day).

So he began putting away a lot of nutrients as fat. Hence to those unaware of how the body really works it looked like his muscle had turned into fat. Lifting weights and Building up muscle does not help you lose fat This is another common belief; many people consider to burn off fat you should concentrate all your labors on cardio.

Bear in mind this though: The SINGLE most important thing to do to stay clear of later fat gains is to make sure you keep all your muscle intact (or to increase it!). If your cutting your calories (which you must do very moderately to lose fat and stay clear of the starvation response) and not lifting weights it is hopeless to keep all your muscle intact.

Bear in mind that muscle is necessary in keeping your metabolism revving like a well oiled engine.

A loss of muscle even if you have adjusted your eating sensibly so as not to invoke the starvation response will change your metabolism, meaning rebound weight gain will be more likely. Therefore to maximize your metabolism and decrease the chance of later weight gain lifting weights is an ideal solution to not only build some attractive muscles but also to keep the fat off for good. Another positive result of lifting weights is that your metabolism is raised for a full 24 hours after you have completed. This happens with cardio but for only 3-4 hours: basically weight lifting is crucial to a lean body!

Many many people (mainly girls) wrongly assume that if they start lifting weights they will instantaneously start looking like they could appear on the front of body building pamphlet: they worry that they will look too big. Now there are many reasons why this fear is unwarranted:

1. For girls, muscle gain is difficult since they have very little of the muscle building bodily chemical testosterone; they have as much as 10 times less than men. For this reason if you are girls and uneasy about looking big it is highly not likely.

If you do start presuming your muscles are bigger than you like, start lowering the amount you are lifting and upping the number of reps. Also muscle is very dense, so if anything having gained muscle and lost fat you will look reduced than you did before.

2. Most of these bodybuilders spend most of their time lifting weights, taking steroids and other muscle enhancing drugs and are very genetically gifted. It would be very not likely even if you followed exactly what they did to replicate their success since you do not share their great genetics.

It is not likely that you share their great genetics; you would already be in great shape with very little endeavor: as your reading this I will assume that is not the case.

3. To put on a lot of muscle takes a lot of nutrients. To put on muscle you must be taking in a lot of energy (especially protein) to rebuild the weakened muscles after you have worked out. For this cause unless you are new to lifting weights it is very difficult to both lose fat and build muscle.

For this reason body builders have two seasons; one season (the off season) where they gorge like horses to put on as much muscle as practical! And a season prior to contests (contest season) where they strip all the fat that they have put on in the time of the off season. This is one of the draw backs of the off season; to productively build a lot of muscle they must suffer also gains in fat, this is bound to happen.

In the time of the contest season male bodybuilders and fitness models can turn down to 4 % -6 % body fat and female body builder and fitness models down to 8 % -12 % body fat.

While the rest of the world is getting fatter on low calorie regime the body builders do the same things year in year out to turn lean and fat free.

They take advantage of the correct nutrition, weight exercising and cardio to rev their metabolism and hold onto all their hard earned muscle they have put on in the time of the off season.

To read all the fat burning secrets of the world's best body builders and fitness designs you MUST read 'Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle.

Tom Venuto is encouraged additional details are available on the website by following the link to read more and see a video review. Healthy Weightloss