Build Muscle to Lose More Weight – and Keep it Off

When weight is lost due to dieting and doing cardio alone, up to 30% of it is muscle and bone mass. Losing muscle will cause your metabolism to slow down, so eventually it will become difficult to lose more weight (and to keep off the weight already lost). When strength training is included, that muscle and bone mass is conserved. (Keep in mind also that adults will lose about a half a pound of muscle every year naturally if no strength training is done, before even considering dieting and weight loss!)

Increasing your resting metabolism (the calories your body burns when it is resting, or sitting at the desk for that matter) will help you lose more weight. Your resting metabolic rate depends mostly on how much muscle you have. The body has to expend more energy to maintain muscle than it does fat. In fact, about 15 times as much energy, meaning 15 times as many calories.

Each additional pound of muscle burns about 50 additional calories each day. Adding 5 pounds of muscle to your body will increase your daily metabolism by about 250 calories per day (that’s 1,750 per week), which amounts to a half a pound of fat loss each week.

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported a weight loss study involving two groups. The first group only did 1-hour sessions of weight-lifting exercises twice a week, and the second group only did low-intensity cardio exercise like walking. Neither group changed their eating habits. The group that lifted weights lost more than 3.5% more body fat than the other group.

Dr. Miriam E. Nelson reported in her book Strong Women Stay Young that strength training also increases bone density. She led a study with one group of women who lifted weights, and another group that did not. The group that lifted weights gained more bone mass. The group of women that did not lift weights lost bone mass during the period of the study.

A few other things to keep in mind:

• When you have more muscle, you put less strain on your joints when exercising.
• Stronger muscles allow the heart to pump more blood with less effort, so there is less stress on the arteries.
• Strength training has been shown to lower blood pressure.
• Strength training is something that should supplement cardio exercise, not replace it. Having a balance of eating healthy, cardio training, strength training, and flexibility training will lead to successful weight loss that can be maintained over the years.