Why Ladies NEED Muscle
By Sue Heintze
When you start on a fat loss program, what do usually do? Make a bee-line for the cardio equipment in order to start burning calories? Drop your calorie intake to create a calorie deficit for fat loss to occur? Drop your carbs completely? Because everyone knows low carb diet work, right?
If this sounds like you, you’re making some big mistakes.
The best way to guarantee that you not only lose body fat but stay lean year round is to actually switch the focus from purely a fat loss viewpoint to one of lean muscle gain. It’s something many women still shy away from.
So let’s go over the reasons you need lean muscle mass and how it’s going to help you build the body of your dreams.
Muscle Tissue Is Metabolically Active
Lean muscle mass is the most metabolically active tissue. The more muscle you have, the more calories you’ll be burning every single second of every single day.
This is a big reason why men seem to have a much easier time losing body fat compared to women. Men are quickly able to burn up excess calories due to their greater level of lean muscle mass, thus they create the calorie deficit required for fat loss with ease.
Building lean muscle mass is not only going to boost your fat loss results, but it will be the best way to prevent future fat gain as well. The higher your metabolic rate is, the less strict you’ll have to be with your daily diet in order to stay leaner long-term.
Muscle Tissue Serves As Carbohydrate Storage
The second reason to focus on building lean muscle mass is because lean muscle mass is going to act as a carbohydrate storage house. If you don’t have much muscle on your body and aren’t depleting the glycogen (glucose) storage in the cells, when you do take in extra glucose in the form of carbohydrates, they’ll immediately get stored as body fat.
If however you have more muscle tissue and are constantly working out, you’ll have partially depleted muscle glycogen stores. This means that the excess carbohydrates you eat will first go to the muscle tissues for storage and only once they are fully saturated will you begin to convert the excess carbs to fat.
So by having more muscle, and working out more often, you can eat more carbs on a day to day basis.
If you dislike low carb dieting, building more muscle is your solution.
Muscle Tissue Enhances Insulin Sensitivity
Another great thing about having more muscle is that it will also increase your insulin sensitivity. This means that your body will be better able to regulate its blood glucose levels and when you do eat carbohydrates, you won’t notice as great of a blood sugar spike followed by crash.
This can help to decrease your risk of diabetes as well as decrease the chances of fat gain over time. If you aren’t instantly storing carbohydrates you eat as body fat (like you will if you have poor insulin sensitivity or ‘insulin resistance’), this makes it easier to sustain the lean figure you’re after.
Muscle Tissue Makes You Stronger
Finally, adding more muscle makes you stronger overall. If you want to improve the quality of your life and make day to day functional movement easier, building more muscle is the way to do this.
Those who have more muscle mass will be able to keep up with the activities they enjoy better, so by nature you may also end up more active on the whole. This again increases your daily calorie burn, making weight management easier as well.
Summing up, if you want to see noticeable changes taking place in your body, step away from the cardio machines and focus on the free weights section. Building more lean muscle mass through a proper resistance training program is the number one way to both lose fat initially, as well as combat fat gain over time.
So ditch the cardio machines.
Pick up a free weight.
That’s where your results will be found.
If this sounds like you, you’re making some big mistakes.
The best way to guarantee that you not only lose body fat but stay lean year round is to actually switch the focus from purely a fat loss viewpoint to one of lean muscle gain. It’s something many women still shy away from.
So let’s go over the reasons you need lean muscle mass and how it’s going to help you build the body of your dreams.
Muscle Tissue Is Metabolically Active
Lean muscle mass is the most metabolically active tissue. The more muscle you have, the more calories you’ll be burning every single second of every single day.
This is a big reason why men seem to have a much easier time losing body fat compared to women. Men are quickly able to burn up excess calories due to their greater level of lean muscle mass, thus they create the calorie deficit required for fat loss with ease.
Building lean muscle mass is not only going to boost your fat loss results, but it will be the best way to prevent future fat gain as well. The higher your metabolic rate is, the less strict you’ll have to be with your daily diet in order to stay leaner long-term.
Muscle Tissue Serves As Carbohydrate Storage
The second reason to focus on building lean muscle mass is because lean muscle mass is going to act as a carbohydrate storage house. If you don’t have much muscle on your body and aren’t depleting the glycogen (glucose) storage in the cells, when you do take in extra glucose in the form of carbohydrates, they’ll immediately get stored as body fat.
If however you have more muscle tissue and are constantly working out, you’ll have partially depleted muscle glycogen stores. This means that the excess carbohydrates you eat will first go to the muscle tissues for storage and only once they are fully saturated will you begin to convert the excess carbs to fat.
So by having more muscle, and working out more often, you can eat more carbs on a day to day basis.
If you dislike low carb dieting, building more muscle is your solution.
Muscle Tissue Enhances Insulin Sensitivity
Another great thing about having more muscle is that it will also increase your insulin sensitivity. This means that your body will be better able to regulate its blood glucose levels and when you do eat carbohydrates, you won’t notice as great of a blood sugar spike followed by crash.
This can help to decrease your risk of diabetes as well as decrease the chances of fat gain over time. If you aren’t instantly storing carbohydrates you eat as body fat (like you will if you have poor insulin sensitivity or ‘insulin resistance’), this makes it easier to sustain the lean figure you’re after.
Muscle Tissue Makes You Stronger
Finally, adding more muscle makes you stronger overall. If you want to improve the quality of your life and make day to day functional movement easier, building more muscle is the way to do this.
Those who have more muscle mass will be able to keep up with the activities they enjoy better, so by nature you may also end up more active on the whole. This again increases your daily calorie burn, making weight management easier as well.
Summing up, if you want to see noticeable changes taking place in your body, step away from the cardio machines and focus on the free weights section. Building more lean muscle mass through a proper resistance training program is the number one way to both lose fat initially, as well as combat fat gain over time.
So ditch the cardio machines.
Pick up a free weight.
That’s where your results will be found.
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