Build Muscle and Lose Weight

Muscle is living tissue, unlike fat which is just stored energy. Just like any other living thing muscle requires calories to survive. Muscle uses calories just to stay on your body. So the more muscle you have the more calories you will use to keep it there.

When people want to lose weight they automatically turn to cardio exercise. This will help you lose weight but most people are not aware of the fact that much of the weight that they will lose will be muscle and not just fat. This is a mistake because the smaller the muscles, the fewer calories they will burn, and because of this weight loss results will begin to slow down and become more and more difficult. You will have to do more and more cardio to keep the results coming. This will leave you a body with little muscle tone which is not always attractive.

Many years ago weight training was considered to be a method of training used only by strongmen and bodybuilders. Many people would look at the large muscular bodies of these athletes and find them freakish and unattractive. Many people looked down on this type of training because they felt that having lots of muscle slowed you down, made you muscle bound, and made you look like some sort of freak.

Even today there are some people who think along the lines that weight training will make them too big and bulky. This is especially true where women are concerned. This type of thinking is laughable because to get to the level of professional bodybuilders is not easy. Nobody and I mean nobody is going to look like a bodybuilders after a few months of weight training.

To look like a bodybuilder you will have to have tremendous discipline, commitment, and motivation. On top of this it would take many years of training to get to that sort of level. Even that can only be achieved if you have near perfect genetics. So you can forget the myth that you may become too muscular, because it isn't going to happen. If by some miracle you find yourself piling on too much muscle, all you have to do is change the way you weight train.

Lifting heavy weights in a rep range of between 6-10 will give you size and strength. Lifting lighter weights in a rep range of between 12-20 will give you muscle tone and muscular endurance. So whatever your goals are, you are in charge. It is your decision as to what you want. Big muscles will not magically start to appear on your body from every angle if you don't want them.

Some people will say that they want to increase their endurance levels and only cardio will do that. It's true that cardio exercise will increase your endurance and stamina; cardio will work your heart and lungs. However if you were to do a circuit using weights such as picking 4 or 5 exercises of 20 reps without rest, you would be panting like a dog on a hot day. This would give you the benefits that cardio could give you, but the added extra would be more muscle tone, an increase in strength, and more calories being burned.

Training with weights will give you a multitude of benefits, which will include weight loss, muscle endurance, strength, muscle tone, increased ability to burn calories, provide protection for your joints by having more muscle around them, and more bone density which reduces the risk of bone diseases in later life. Apart from all these you will look great, people will notice you, you will feel more confident, look more attractive, and clothes will fit you perfectly instead of hanging off you. The bottom line is that if you don't weight train then you are really selling yourself short.

In the modern world it is not only bodybuilders and power lifters that use weight training. Boxers, footballers, track athletes, racing drivers, basketball players, and a whole host of other sportsmen include weight training in their training routines. These sportsmen understand the immense improvements that training with weights will add to their individual sports and the increase in their levels of achievement. So if weight training is so important to the sportsman, don't you think that you may get some benefits from building muscle?