The argument for building muscle to lose fat appears to be a straightforward one.

For each and every pound of muscle mass you put on, your rate of metabolism will increase by between 50 and 100 calories per day.

As a result, gaining only a few pounds of lean muscle is going to use up as many calories as jogging twenty-five miles each week.

All while you’re sleeping, sitting at the desk or resting on the sofa.

Or is it? I’m not so sure that building muscle to lose fat is a very good idea…

The primary issue is that muscle doesn’t burn off 50-100 calories for every pound.

In fact, research indicates that the resting rate of metabolism of muscle is significantly lower than a lot of people think – close to 6 calories for every pound.

I should also explain that fat is more than merely useless tissue. It releases proteins such as leptin and cytokines, which can impact your rate of metabolism. Fat has a rate of metabolism of around 2 calories per pound.

If you were to get rid of a few pounds of fat and replace it with the same quantity of muscle, your resting metabolism would increase by under 10 calories a day. That’s not enough to have any kind of significant influence on weight loss.

The approximations of the resting metabolism of muscle tissue I’ve just provided make one presumption – a constant rate of protein turnover.

However, lifting weights will speed up protein turnover (which means a rise in the speed of protein synthesis and breakdown) in the hours and days after exercise.

To put it differently, whilst the metabolic rate of muscle while resting isn’t as high as some people think, the metabolic rate of muscle tissue whilst it’s recuperating suggests that people who have increased muscular mass will likely use up more calories during the post-training phase.

The second dilemma is that you’d have to build a huge amount of muscle mass to have a significant impact on your rate of metabolism.

To expend an extra 10,000 calories a month – sufficient to shed just about three pounds of excess fat – you’d need to build more than fifty pounds of muscle.

That’s a lot more than the average joe is going to gain throughout their exercise life span.

Basically, the notion of building muscle to lose fat is really a flawed one.

Nevertheless that doesn’t suggest that lifting weights is unnecessary if you’re looking to lose fat. Far from it. Lifting weights will almost certainly enhance your body composition in a few important ways.

For starters, weight training burns calories (and fat). Not only during your workout, but – as long as you exercise intensely – after it’s finished too.

Next, in the event you don’t perform some type of weight training while you’re going on a diet, a lot of the pounds you drop may come from muscle mass as well as fat.

It’s also worth mentioning that the amount of weight you lose is a lot less significant compared to exactly where that lost fat comes from. If you drop ten pounds of body fat whilst putting on 3 pounds of muscle mass, your weight on the weighing scales will still only have dropped by 7 pounds. But you’ll appear thirteen pounds different.

So what form of resistance training should you be engaging in?

A successful strength training program ought to be based on squats, deadlifts, rows, chin-ups (or pulldowns) and presses using heavy(ish) weights and low (5-8) reps. Use whatever resistance is available – dumbbells, kettlebells, strength training machines, or perhaps your own bodyweight – to get the job done.