How To Burn Fat And Build Lean Muscle - Critical Facts You Must Know To Avoid Losing Muscle
The idea of you going to the gym, busting your rear end off sculpting a new body, and then find out that not only have you been working your body to burn fat, you've also been working your body to lose muscle is pretty disturbing! Let me explain how to avoid this calamity.
First things first. In order to burn body fat and gain lean muscle, you must incorporate all of the most important steps in order to be successful. Those steps would be drinking plenty of water, getting 7-9 hours of rest, dieting, exercising, and staying consistent with it all...since getting healthy is a lifestyle and not an every now and then thing.
When you are exercising with goals to lose weight and build lean muscle, you must do aerobic and anaerobic exercising. This would be some form of cardio (treadmill, running, jogging, boxing, elliptical, bike, swimming, etc.), and also weight training. However, in order to build lean muscle you need to limit the amount of cardio you do.
When you are performing cardio exercises, your body taps into your fat stores for energy, thus burning fat. However, if you do too much cardio, your body will then begin to take a detour to your muscle for energy, thus losing muscle along with fat!
My recommendation, for those who are trying to lose weight and build lean muscle, is on the days you are weight training, limit the amount of cardio you do to around 20-30 minutes a session at a moderate pace, and make sure you do cardio before you weight train (this point is argued to no end and I recommend you research the benefits of doing cardio before weight lifting as this topic is quite large of itself). If you have days where you do just cardio, your sessions should remain under one hour to assure you do not start losing muscle.
Another extremely important tip to not lose muscle when you are exercising is too make sure you are getting plenty of protein daily, in particular whey protein (which is great in supplement form such as a shake). Protein provides amino acids which builds and also repairs muscle tissue. It is recommended that you have 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. Poultry and fish are excellent sources of protein and are either low in fat or contain healthy monounsaturated fat. My advice would be to have a protein shake before and after every workout to make sure your muscle growth and fat burning efforts are successfully accomplished.
Finally, the last tip you must incorporate is rest. You must rest your body to allow your muscles to repair and grow. Over training is dangerous and can thwart your muscle building goals.
In summary, if you want to successfully burn fat and build lean muscle, you must do both cardio and weight training. However you must keep cardio training to no more than 45 minutes if you wish to both gain muscle and burn fat. Include protein before and after your workouts, along with proper dieting, rest, and hydrating, and your health and fitness efforts will be a success.
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