The great cardio vs. strength debate is coming to a near end, and sorry, elliptical fans, but in the case of fat loss, strength is king.
Muscle is a critical part of losing weight and staying lean and to get rid of the soft, flabby feel around your midsection and to create tighter, firmer, harder-looking thighs, arms, shoulders, and hips, you need more muscle. That’s right, more muscle is your ticket to the body you want.
If your initial response is to skip the strength-training area of the gym out of a fear that you’ll be bulking up like a bodybuilder, don’t worry. It’s a common fear. A lot of women believe that lifting weights will give them Incredible Hulk muscles. Rest assured, that’s not going to happen.
Muscle has been terribly misunderstood. In fact, most women are unable to grow huge, bulging muscles but can certainly take advantage of the other benefits of strength training. Below are three important reasons that you should focus on muscle strength during your next gym session:
1. Muscle burns calories
Add 1 pound of muscle to your body and you raise your resting metabolic rate per day by 37.5 calories. Resting metabolic rate is the number of calories that your body burns daily in a relaxed state. An average woman, for example, might have a resting metabolic rate of 1,200 calories per day. Add a pound of muscle and her rate would be raised to 1,237.5 calories per day. Again, that’s resting metabolic rate, the amount you would burn, say, while lounging on the couch or sleeping.
A pound of fat, by comparison, necessitates only 2 calories per day to exist. Muscle, therefore, is 18.75 times more active metabolically than the same amount of fat. The calorie-burning results of added muscle can have a positive, permanent effect on losing fat and keeping it off.
2. Muscle moves your body
Muscle connects to tendons, and tendons cross joints and attach to bones. When muscles contract or shorten, they pull on bones, and the bones move. Movement of bones results in the flexion and extension of joints.
Although it may seem like an overly simple explanation of what happens to produce movement in your body, muscles are the only things that allow you to move. Hundreds of skeletal muscles can be contracted and relaxed to produce thousands and thousands of simple and complex actions.
Life as we know it is composed of movement. So if you want to improve your life, you must strengthen your ability to move. Proper exercise against resistance does that. It can make you a better word processor, piano player, walker, runner, swimmer, dancer or singer. You name the action or activity, and proper exercise will help you do it better.
3. Muscle strengthens your bones
Osteoporosis is a condition occurring mostly in women, in which bones become less dense, or more porous and brittle. Prevention and treatment of osteoporosis involves eating calcium-rich foods, taking calcium supplements, pursuing hormone therapy, and exercising. By far the most productive form of exercise for increasing bone density is strength training.
Regularly stressing your muscles and bones against resistance encourages your body to lay down new bone cells. Because osteoporosis is such a debilitating disease, you should be doing muscle-building strength exercises even if you don’t need to lose weight. It’s that important.
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This article was adapted from “Tighten Your Tummy in 2 Weeks” and originally appeared on Rodale Wellness
