Some people are not aware of how much muscle they may have lost in the weight that they have lost. You must do as much as you can to keep muscle loss at a minimum.
Muscle needs lots of calories to function. So if your body has lots of muscle, you will burn more calories by keeping it there.
Ironically your body prefers not to keep too much muscle on its frame, because it has to use so many calories to stay put and your body would rather not waste so many calories on muscle, when it could use those calories as an emergency store in the form of fat.
Back in the day when there were no supermarkets or fast food outlets the ability to store fat was beneficial so that it could be used for energy when times were hard.
Today however this ability is not such a blessing as we have food readily available to us. Your body has not had enough time to evolve to suit present day conditions. It will still want to keep the fat, regardless of your thoughts on the idea.
The majority of weight loss methods advocate large drops in calories. On top of this any exercise you do will deplete your calories further. This could appear to be ideal conditions to lose weight as burning more calories than you are consuming equals weight loss right?
Your body has it's own ideas. Once it understands that here has been a reduction in the calories it is used to, it will go on the defensive.
Its answer to this problem is to slow down its abilities to burn calories and to find more calories from elsewhere. Your muscles will be the first place your body looks to for these extra calories. The outcome is muscles lacking in size and energy. Because your muscles have shrunk they will burn fewer calories. As your body is doing all it can to keep the calories, it will be tougher to lose any weight. You have to realise that out of the all weight you might lose initially, much of that could consist of muscle. You must have experienced this scenario. You go on a diet, at first things seem to be going well, but after a short time results start to slow down and eventually stop. It looks as if the diet has reached the end of the road, so you give up trying. The problem is that it's difficult to get rid of fat while trying to increase muscle, however it's not all bad news. You can minimise the amount of muscle you lose by using weight training as part of your exercise program.
On top of this, weight training by its very nature will require that you don't cut back too much on calories, because your muscles will require calories for growth. Get more healthy food into your diet and get rid of the garbage.
There is weight training and there is WEIGHT TRAINING. Keep away from exercises that only work 1 or 2 muscles at a time. Focus on compound exercises; these sorts of exercises make use of a lot more muscles.
Design a program around a handful of exercises such as squatting, bench pressing, dips, dead lifting, chin ups, and bent over rows. Exercises like these force your body to send energy to your muscles, and calories are energy. Your muscles will scream for calories and your body will have to send them to your muscles, leaving less for fat storage. To get even better results, make a reduction to your carb intake and increase your protein intake. Following these strategies you will lose the fat and keep the muscle.
Why? The main reason is because free-weights require complete strength and coordination of the weight, so your muscles are forced to work harder. If your muscles are working harder, then typically this results in more growth. If the motion of the exercise is supported and guided through its path, such as with machines, then your muscles have much less stress when lifting the weight.
When you workout with free-weights, your muscles are forced to balance the weight through the range of motion without any assistance. This explains why even with what you would consider light weight you may initially find a new type of exercise challenging. The more freedom of motion forces you to use all of your muscles available, whereas most machines eliminate the use of certain muscles, and this obviously will take away from your overall strength and muscle mass.
This is not to say that machines are altogether useless for gaining muscle mass. Many machines do in fact allow you to work out in different angles that free-weights cannot, so in many cases they do have their purpose. However, if you are like most people and want to build muscle mass as fast and efficiently as possible, I'll get right to the point:
STICK TO FREE-WEIGHTS!
Gaining strength in barbell and dumbbell exercises, especially compound exercises such as squats, deadlifts, bench presses, bent-over rows, shoulder presses and a few others will always build much more solid, hard, muscle mass then machines, period. A muscle mass building workout MUST contain mostly free-weights.
If you have been using mostly machines for a while and havn't seen any results worth bragging about, then perhaps this is where the fault is. I would suggest that if you wanted to focus on strictly building muscle mass and strength as fast as possible that you stick to using free-weights exclusively.
In a nutshell, machines are good for pumping and isolation exercises, and free-weights are for gaining muscle weight fast and packing on serious pounds of muscle in record time. If you have had a lot of trouble either building muscle mass, gaining weight, or both, then it is even more important for you to focus on training only with free-weights, and to combined this with short and intense workouts, rather then long marathon type training sessions.
With these key factors in mind, you should have no trouble gaining weight and building muscle mass as as fast as naturally possible.
Both Terry Sandhu & Derek Manuel are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Terry Sandhu has sinced written about articles on various topics from Health, Fitness and Lose Weight. Learn how you can lose weight without torturing yourself with our popular which can be found at. Terry Sandhu's top article generates over 74000 views. to your Favourites.
Derek Manuel has sinced written about articles on various topics from Build Muscle, Bodybuilding Supplements and Build Muscle. Derek Manuel is the author of the best-selling, How to Gain Weight and Build Muscle for Hardgainers. If you want to learn how you too can gain 20 to 30 pounds of solid muscle in as short as 8 weeks, or if you just want more quality informati. Derek Manuel's top article generates over 6600 views. to your Favourites.