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Muscle Your Way to Weight Loss

Developing muscle is one of the best ways to control weight because it causes a double reducing effect.

By Wayne Westcott

"Even though dieting works reasonably well as a weight loss strategy, it has serious drawbacks…"

Standing in line at the super market, wedged between carts full of TV dinners, processed cheese and improved varieties of dish soap, waiting shoppers are bombarded with magazine-rack hype. Packaged in a variety of covers, one topic is guaranteed to grab our attention. "Diet Your Way to Happiness," "Lose Thirty Pounds by Summer," "Fabulous Thighs in Nine Minutes a Week," and "Diet of the Stars: Grapefruit and Garlic" -- they vie not only for our attention, but our dollars. Weight may be the great American obsession.

Not surprisingly, the reason most new exercisers give for launching an exercise routing is the desire to lose weight. Of course exercise is not the only way to reduce surplus body weight - an attempt to control food consumption is the more usual approach. Dieting is, after all, a big business. Americans reportedly spend some 30 billion dollars annually on weight loss products and programs.

It's a lot when you consider that losing fat is not hard to do - in principle. If we eat more calories than we need for our daily energy expenditure then we store the excess calories as body fat. Conversely, if we eat fewer calories than we require for our daily energy expenditure, we use up some of our stored body fat to provide the necessary calories

Very low calorie diets (600-900 calories per day) may produce almost as much muscle loss as fat loss, which generates an additional problem.

The Diet Strategy

The most popular and straightforward way to produce a negative calorie balance is to diet. Eating 500 fewer calories per day results in a pound of fat loss per week. Still, even though dieting works reasonably well as a weight loss strategy, it has serious drawbacks.

Here's one of them. When we reduce our calorie consumption most of the additional energy comes from stored fat, however, some of the additional energy comes from protein stores which results in muscle loss. Very low calorie diets (600-900 calories per day) may produce almost as much muscle loss as fat loss, which generates an additional problem. The reduction in muscle mass causes a corresponding decrease in metabolic rate, making further fat loss even more difficult.

Numerous follow-up studies of dieters reveal that lost weight is typically regained within several months after the diet is over. Intolerant of change, our bodies tend to counter adjust for any shift. For example, after a few nights of little sleep, we may end up sleeping several hours longer than normal. In the same way, after finishing a reduced calorie diet we may tend to overeat in a somewhat compensatory manner. woman lifting dumbbells

The Aerobic Strategy

A better approach to weight loss is via aerobic exercise, that is, exercise characterized by continuous large muscle activity such as running, cycling, and swimming. Take cycling, for example. Depending on the level of intensity, 500 calories could be consumed by a rider on a thirty to fifty minute ride.

In addition to burning calories, aerobic exercise stimulates a variety of beneficial cardiovascular adaptations: the heart becomes a stronger pump, the circulatory network becomes more efficient, and the blood becomes a better transporter.

Unlike dieting, which often leaves us feeling deprived, aerobic exercise adds something positive to our lives - physical activity. An unlike dieting, aerobic exercise need not be a short-term phenomenon. When integrated into our regular routine, aerobic exercise actually permits greater calorie consumption to meet the extra energy requirements.

The Strength-Building Strategy

Developing muscle is one of the best ways to control weight because it causes a double reducing effect. First, resistance training is vigorous physical activity: a significant number of calories are burned during exercise. Second, the additional muscle tissue produced by resistance training increases resting metabolism: calories are burned at a higher rate all day long - regardless of activity or inactivity.

For years people have associated resistance training with bodybuilding and weightlifting. Yet only a small percentage of men and women possess the genetic capacity to develop relatively large muscles; most of us do not. On the contrary, those of us who don't do regular resistance training should be concerned about losing too much muscle.

After we reach physical maturity in our early twenties, our bodies begin a long and gradual degenerative process. Our maximum heart rate decreases by about one beat per year throughout our lives. Another effect of the aging process is a reduction in muscle mass, which decreases by about one-half pound a year throughout our lives. More…

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