I know, I know you love your cardio…

You look forward to it every morning and it’s the first thing you do as soon as you hit the gym. You make a bee line for that elliptical and sweat it out for 35-40 minutes. You give yourself 5 minutes before hitting the weights to cool off and wipe the sweat off your face.

With the energy you have left you manage to get in a 30-minute workout with weights. A little bit of this and a little bit of that and you’re done. You feel like you’ve totally earned your shower!

Insert TRUTH BOMB here,

Cardio is great and can help you increase your endurance and help you lose fat BUT…

If your only really focusing your efforts on cardio, it’s really just going to make you into a smaller version of yourself. You’re not going to build that booty and sculpt those sexy rounded shoulders you oh so crave with cardio alone. Sorry, but it ain’t gonna happen. You’re also not going to get the metabolism boosting benefits from focusing most of your efforts on cardio.

So what’s the answer to shaping your body, losing fat and boosting your metabolism?

It’s Beautiful Muscle!

Muscle is really a big key to fat loss and also your health. Building lean muscle can definitely help you reach your fat loss goals. When I say muscle I am talking about nice, lean muscle mass – so don’t worry this is not about getting big and bulky unless you want to. Women just don’t have enough testosterone to get that big and bulky. Women only have 5%-10% of the testosterone that men do. Some women may be on a specific program or using steroids to help them increase in size.

Here are some of the awesome benefits of building beautiful lean muscle,

decreases obesity
increases metabolism
increases bone density
a natural way to detox the body
increases energy
increases strength
shapes and firms your body
makes you feels good and can lift your mood
decreases resting heart rate

Shall I continue…

I just want to mention how muscle can help increase bone density which is especially important for women. As you get into your 40’s, metabolism starts to slow down, fat starts to creep up like an annoying ex-boyfriend and your bones start to lose strength. Now add menopause to the mix and the risk for osteoporosis increases. Increasing lean muscle will help to strengthen your bone mass, joints and connective tissue.

So why is lean muscle so important?

The more lean muscle you have on your body = more calories burned. Muscle tissue is very metabolically active compared to fat. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, even when sleeping. Now isn’t that an awesome thing! In the business world it’s like passive fat loss!

Let’s break it down…

A huge factor that determines your body weight is your metabolism. This is like your internal furnace that will affect how much fat you burn.

* The key is to increase your metabolism *

If your metabolism is functioning optimally with some nice lean muscle, it will help you burn more calories and fat. You have your thyroid which is the main gland of your metabolism. Along with the help of your thyroid hormones, muscle tissue will direct your metabolic rate. Muscle is going to help you increase your metabolism.

Muscle tissue actually accounts for 70% of your basal metabolic rate. This is a large amount of calories you burn each day just by living. Your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is the total number of calories you burn each day at rest just by living, breathing digesting and so on. So 70% is a huge amount so you want to make sure that your metabolism is not sluggish and running at a slow capacity.

→ Muscle is #1 for Increasing Your Metabolism ←

The more muscle you have, the more fat you will burn

Muscle is your main fat-burning tissue

So what’s the best way to increase lean muscle mass?

Resistance Training!

Resistance training is really the key to build a good amount of lean muscle and increase your metabolism. For every one pound of muscle you have, you will burn about 6-7 calories compared to fat which only burns 2-3 calories per pound. Resistance training also helps to increase insulin sensitivity and the uptake of glucose into your muscle cells to help repair and build lean muscle.

Your EPOC (say what now…) your Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption is also the highest after a challenging resistance training session. After training, your body is taking in more oxygen than usual to bring your body back into its pre-exercise sate. This is also known as “the after-burn” and your burning calories at an elevated rate and time. Your EPOC can be up to 36 hours after training – this means your metabolism is working at a high capacity and burning calories. Amazing!

Steady state cardio alone only had an EPOC of only a couple of hours after exercise so you’re pretty much burning calories as you exercise. So if you burned 400 calories on the elliptical then that’s pretty much what you burned. HIIT or High Intensity Interval training had better results. The EPOC can last much longer with more calorie burn. This still won’t compare with the EPOC from an awesome strength training session!

The hormones that affect the growth of lean muscle and your recovery when training include: cortisol, growth hormone, testosterone and TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone). As women we rely much more on growth hormone to build lean muscle.

It’s important to make sure these hormones are balanced to give you the best advantage to burn fat and build lean muscle. When your exercising with the right the strategies, it’s much more beneficial for you and your fat loss goals.

So there you have it. Cardio has its place when it comes to fat loss but resistance training is Queen. Focus your energy on resistance training and building lean muscle. Now add in a couple of HIIT workouts with your resistance training and your fat cells won’t know what hit them! If you want to increase your metabolism, shape your body, lose fat and decrease your chances of osteoporosis then it’s time to get pumped about lifting weights!

Your friend and strategist,