The Muscle Metabolism Boost: Weight Loss and Beyond
Eat good, look good, feel good!
Welcome back to my series on mastering your caloric deficit! In earlier posts, we explored active ways to burn calories, highlighting the reality that you can’t outrun a bad diet and how non-exercise activities can contribute to weight loss. Today, we shift our focus to passive calorie-burning methods, with muscle-building taking center stage.
Understanding the Basics of Caloric Deficit
To recap, the fundamental equation of weight management is:
Calories In = Calories Out
While reducing caloric intake is one approach to weight loss, the other is to increase our calories out. This is where passive calorie burning comes into play, of which building muscle is a crucial part.The Muscle Advantage
Besides helping you look and feel great, building and maintaining muscle mass is one of the most effective strategies for increasing your resting metabolic rate. Here’s why:
Muscle burns more calories:
Unlike fat, muscle tissue is metabolically active. For every pound of muscle you have, you burn about 6-10 calories per day – just by existing. As you build more muscle, your body needs to expend more calories to sustain it. This means that the more muscle you have, the higher your resting energy expenditure (REE). Just think of it like owning a sports car - you move faster and look better in it, but it’ll also cost you a lot more to obtain AND maintain it.
This also benefits us in our active expenditure. The more muscle mass we have, the more weight we can push for longer periods of time. This increases over time as well, leading to workout sessions that consume more calories.
Beyond just calories:
While building muscle takes time and consistency, the longer you maintain this increased muscle mass, the more your metabolism can work for you even when you’re not actively exercising.
This is the ideal state where one can realistically “eat a lot but not get fat”.
But beyond being a metabolic sink, elevated muscle mass is also directly tied to cardiovascular and bone health, better mobility, reduced mortality rates, quality of life improvements, and resistance to the effects of aging, inflammation, and chronic diseases (just to name a few).
It’s a long term investment that goes beyond our current weight loss goals.
Rome wasn’t built in a day – neither are you
“I’m ready for action! What should I start with?” you might say.
A lot of coaches in this field swear by their discipline in toughing it out. We even have tier lists of what exercises net the greatest results.
However, none of that matters if we make a start but don’t end up sticking with our routine, even if it yields the best possible results.
Therefore, I prefer to go by interests and preferences.
Out of all the methods you can choose to achieve your goal, which one seems the most interesting? Which one do you enjoy? What felt good? Start with that. It’s not too late to start fine-tuning our routine after we’ve grown accustomed to it. We tend to learn a lot about our tendencies and preferences AFTER we’ve started.
I was a multi-sport athlete for almost a decade before I came to understand the importance of a proper resistance training routine. Did I wish I could’ve started taking care of myself earlier? For sure. But the passion and pure enjoyment of just being able to play the sports I love now is what fuels me to hit the gym. I continue to pursue fitness and nutrition, in hopes that what I do now will allow me to continue enjoying what I love well into my 50s.
And just like me, as you keep trudging along, I’m certain that you too will eventually land on a routine that fits both your goals and interests.
The importance of picking up and dropping heavy things
We talked about the importance of building muscles, but also the importance of finding a preferred method to achieve that. But for those who say, “I don’t need help with motivation. I just need someone to give me the most time efficient way of building muscle”, I would recommend working your way towards compound lifts. These are exercises that generally utilize a big part or all of our body to complete. Not only do they build strength fast, the muscular coordination and flexibility that we get are also integral in improving our functional health.
Here are a few popular ones to try:
Squats
Lunges
Deadlifts
Pulling (Pull-ups, rows)
Pressing (Bench press, Overhead press)
What weight is a good weight?
Not sure what weight to start with? Here’s a general list of weight standards based on body weight ratios:
*Remember: Chasing good form under proper range of motion (ROM) is always more important to muscle growth than the weight or rep itself!
On the role of nutrition
Nutrition again – getting repetitive, right? But it really is that important.
Consuming enough protein is crucial for muscle repair and growth. Aim for a diet rich in whole foods to support your metabolism with the right macronutrients (protein, carbs, fats) and micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, and other phytonutrients, etc.).
It would suck for all that hard work in the gym to go to waste from the wrong fuel. Eat right, and your results will follow.
Final Thoughts
As we combine active and passive calorie-burning methods to help with our weight maintenance, remember that building muscle is a powerful tool in your weight loss arsenal. It requires dedication and consistency, but the payoff is significant: a more efficient metabolism that helps you achieve and maintain your caloric deficit easier. Not to mention all the other health benefits that you get as a bonus to elevate your wellbeing.
So, enough said - time to hit the gym!
In our next installment, we’ll delve deeper into other passive strategies for increasing your metabolism, so stay tuned!
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My content here is free, so a donation of any amount would mean the world to me as it gives me the confidence that what I’m doing is making a difference!