More muscles mean burning more calories every day and less daily fat storage

Your muscles speed up the process of burning extra calories.  Muscles’ true advantage when it comes to weight loss is they constantly feed on calories.

• One pound of muscle burns between 40 and 120 calories a day just to sustain itself.
• One pound of fat can sustain itself on only 1 to 3 calories.
• Day after day, that’s a huge difference in the rate of daily calorie burn (metabolic rate).

Strength training builds muscle mass
There are two main forms of exercise, stamina training and strength training:

• Stamina training increases your muscles’ capacity to produce and use the energy they need to contract.  Stamina training for the most part means movement exercises such as running, jogging, and walking.
• Strength training creates more muscle mass and that’s what you need to help burn fat.  Muscle serves as a primary energy consumer for your body.  Add just a little more muscle, and you’ll use more energy and store less fat.

Having more muscle as you age is crucial when you consider that we lose an average of 5% of our muscle mass every ten years after the age of thirty five – if we don’t do anything about it.

If you don’t intentionally rebuild muscle through exercise, every ten years you‘ll need to eat 120 to 420 fewer calories each day to maintain your current weight.

Build stamina, strength and flexibility every week

• Thirty minutes a day of walking or more strenuous cardiovascular exercise helps to rebuild the stamina and strength-based proteins.  That prepares your muscles for…
• Thirty minutes or more of strength/resistance training a week to rebuild the strength-based proteins.
• Add at least thirty more minutes per week for flexibility training.  You don’t want to look muscle bound and flexibility is necessary for maximum well being.

You can see the results in your body
Fat floats and muscle sinks.  Pound for pound, muscle is simply a lot heaver than fat, and that means it takes up less room.  When you do strength training, you may not see weight loss immediately, but you will see a reduction in your waist size and overall shape.

Over time, the more muscle you have, the more calories it burns and you don’t gain weight as easily.

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