So, why do you keep banging on about lifting weights and building muscle woman!?

Body Composition

There is a reason why lifting weights and building muscle is beneficial for weight loss, but for most people it isn’t clear why.  I’ll try to explain...

Muscle is a living tissue.  Like all living things it needs energy (in this case calories) to survive.   And this is something I will say only once......

GIRLS WONT GET BIGGER LIFTING WEIGHTS!!!!!!

Unless you are taking some kind of dubious supplements, women aren’t made that way.  Being able to get huge muscles requires testosterone, which is something the boys corner the market on.  However, while we won’t get bigger, we will get stronger.

The stronger a muscle is, the more muscle fibres it has.  A good example would be to imagine you are planning a party.  The room the party is in would be the muscle, and the guests would be the muscle fibres.  If 5 people turn up, the room would stay the same size, but the space available for each person would be less.  If another 10 people turn up, again, the room would stay exactly the same size, but the guests would each have less room/be more compacted.  Also, the more people in the room, the heavier the total weight of the guests in the room!  The same applies to muscle - will become denser, and weigh more, but it will NOT get any bigger.

 The more effort you put in to inviting people, the more people come, (which translates to the more resistance exercise you do, the more muscle fibres you make!)  Now, these people need to be fed – it would take a hell of a lot more food to feed 20 people than 5 – and again, the more muscle fibres you have, the more energy/calories your body will need to maintain itself day to day! – This is how building lean muscle is key to increasing your metabolism. The higher your metabolism, the more fat you will burn over the course of 24hrs.

The above picture shows how focusing on changing overall body composition is far more beneficial than just looking at the number on the scales.

There are 2 types of exercise which are vitally important to changing your body shape and composition.

1.    Cardiovascular exercise (walking, running, swimming – exercises that get you out of breath). This form of exercise will burn fat and raise your metabolism for the rest of the day.

2.   Resistance exercises (push ups, squats, lifting weights) this will increase the amount of muscle fibres you have.  The more muscle fibres you have, the more calories your body needs to survive, so the more calories you will burn over a 24hr period.

By incorporating both forms of exercise, you will gradually decrease the amount of fat on your body, but also increase your metabolism by having more muscle fibres!

That’s the exercise part.  The other vital component of your success is changing how/what you eat.  Both need to happen for you to lose weight and tone up. I’ll cover that next...... J

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