Lose Fat by Building Muscle - How Does It Work?

By Rich Carroll

First, let's expose one myth of a few body-builders: to lose fat, building muscle is all you need. By not changing diet or aerobic activity, a person trying to lose fat will only see minimal losses by building muscle. It is true, however, that building lean muscle will yield other ways of helping to lose fat, by itself don't expect a great deal of help.

To examine this further, there are claims that each pound of resting lean muscle burns 50 calories a day. Sorry, but that figure is much overstated. Resting muscle is like an idling car; it burns some fuel, but not much. Doing nothing, those muscles burn about 13 calories a day. If a person were to gain ten pounds just building lean muscle, he would burn 910 calories in a week. To lose fat at this rate, it would take him about 27 days to lose one pound of body fat. That of course does not take into account all the other variables, such as gaining any extra body fat while building lean muscle. When you are building muscle, you are going to need additional calories to support this new growth. To think that none will go into body fat would be truly optimistic.

That said, is building lean muscle while we are trying to lose fat not possible when trying to accomplish our long-term goals? We take the position that building muscle is an important part of your battle to lose fat, but it is only one leg in a three-leg stool. One of the other vital legs to lose fat is aerobic activity, and if our muscles are growing and actively calling for additional nutrients, our body will feel alive and energetic, making us more inclined to do the necessary aerobic activity. Additionally, the third leg of the stool is diet. Just as all fats are not created equal, all calories are not all created equal. There are good calories and bad calories, and the type of foods you choose will have a great impact on the type of body mass you will attain.

When building muscle, you are creating mini metabolism machines that are constantly working. To sustain this activity, they crave more nutrients in order to keep going. To lose fat, we have always been told that we have to cut back on calories. Here is where proper diet kicks in. By eating high fat foods, such as cheeseburgers or foods high in Tran's fats and processed foods, more of those calories will be converted to fat than muscle. The trick is to eat just enough calories to sustain building lean muscle, but only those foods that are clean, whole foods that the body will burn for fuel and growth. By cutting out junk foods, sugars and all processed foods, and replace them with whole foods such as lean protein, fibrous carbohydrates and clean fats, building muscle and losing fat will become a breeze and you should start to notice the difference in two or three weeks.

One final word on building lean muscle: During your initial period of training, many people experience fat loss regardless of what they eat, but to their surprise it doesn't sustain. As testosterone levels are increasing, the body is using everything, including stored fat to build muscle. But this only happens for a certain period of time before your body needs more food to sustain strength levels. Again, the fuel you feed your body will determine if you will lose fat while building muscle.

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