Lean Muscle is the Key to Looking Tight and Tone

I see it all the time, people who spend hours doing cardio and still have a high percentage of body fat.  To burn body fat and to look tight and tone you must build lean muscle.  This is especially true as you approach your 40s and beyond.

Strength training is the best way to build and maintain healthy muscle.  While cardiovascular exercise is an important part of your fitness program, maximizing lean muscle should be the the foundation of your exercise routine.  Strength training is important because around the age of 40 you start to experience muscle loss. "If you don't do anything to replace the lean muscle you lose, you'll increase the percentage of fat in your body," says Dr. Edward Laskowski, a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.  Left unabated, you can lose up to 10 pounds of muscle each decade starting at age 40.

Loosing muscle is detrimental to your fitness because muscle is the component of your body that burns the majority of the calories you consume each day.  Therefore, when you lose muscle your body requires less calories to function.  Consequently, those extra calories you consume are stored as fat around your waist, hips, and other places.

Your body constantly burn calories, even when you’re doing nothing. This resting metabolic rate is much higher in people with more muscle. Every pound of muscle uses about six calories a day to sustain itself, while each pound of fat burns only two calories daily. This small difference can add up over time. In addition, after a bout of resistance training, muscles are activated all over your body, increasing your average daily metabolic rate.

Fortunately, strength training can mitigate, and even reverse the loss of muscle at any age.  Thus, increasing the amount of calories needed to function.  That’s why you hear some people say that their appetites increase after they have been strength training for awhile.  This is a sign that they are starting to build muscle.

As with any fitness program, a well balanced diet is a key component to seeing the best results.  Qivana's Metaboliq Weight Maintenance System is the best I've see in my 20 years in the health and fitness industry at teaching you balance in your diet in order for your body to burn body fat at it's maximum efficiency.  You can checkout this system by following this link: Metaboliq