Do You Want to Burn Fat or Grow Muscle? Part 2
As we looked at yesterday, it is possible to burn fat and gain muscle but doing both at the same time to the degree that you might want, may be difficult. You still have to decide which is more important to you, to burn fat or to gain muscle. If you have decided that as far as your diet is concerned that you want to burn fat then your exercise plan has to mirror that. You are eating to make your workout plan more productive. The two work together.
There are some who believe that you should work first on burning the fat and then, once you have burned all your fat then you can start concentrating on gaining muscle.There is no reason that you should decide to do one without doing the other. Both can be done at the same time. You just need to find the balance in your workout that will help you accomplish that. Some will say that you can just work on building muscle because your fat will turn into muscle. Do not believe that. Fat can not be turned into muscle. They are two very different things made up of different materials. Just because you lost five pounds of fat but gained five pounds of muscle does not mean that one turned into another. Your body is transforming itself but fat isn’t being transformed into muscle.
One very important reason that you should work to both gain muscle and burn fat is that the more muscle you have, the more calories are burned. Muscle burns calories just by being there. Your body burns calories whether you are being active or not. Just sitting in your chair reading for two hours, if you are around 200 pounds (91kgs), you are going to be burning about 250 calories. If you sleep 8 hours at night you lose more than 675 calories. The more muscle you have, the more calories will be burned doing nothing. Just think of how many more calories you will burn by actually working out.
You will want to have a mixture of anaerobic and aerobic exercise in your workout regimen. To help you understand the difference in the two, anaerobic means without oxygen aerobic means with oxygen. Anaerobic workouts involve short powerful movements (like with weightlifting) that increases power and muscle and are done for short periods of time. Aerobic involves less stressful movements but keeps them up for longer periods of time and require a lot more oxygen to keep the exercise going.
If you have decided that it is more important to burn fat then you need to be focusing more on aerobic activity. Fat needs oxygen to burn. The more muscle you have, however, causes more calories to burn. If it is more important for you to lose fat then you need to be concentrating more on aerobic activity, spend 60% of your workout time concentrating on this and the rest of the time on anaerobic exercises. When you go to the gym or work out at home, spend 30-40 minutes on the treadmill or on some other machine to help you get a lot a lot of oxygen into your blood. This will be burning the fat off but it will not be developing muscle. You will also be using energy you have stored doing this that you would need for weightlifting and muscle building.
If your main goal is to build muscle then spend 75% of your workout time focusing in on anaerobic exercises and then the other 25% on aerobic activity. For 10-15 minutes get on the treadmill, cycle or stair climber or walk or whatever you prefer. This will not only help burn a little bit of fat but it will also get your body warmed up. After you have done this then move on to the main event where you gain muscle, the weight lifting. Remember that 75% of the fuel you use doing anaerobic activity comes from carbohydrates. It is best to make sure that you have gotten a good supply of it prior to the workout. Eating some slow burning carbs, such as rice or pasta, will help you have the energy you need to make the workout as productive as possible.
Break your workouts up so that each muscle group has a day to recover before you work it again. Monday work out your back. Tuesday focus in on your chest, biceps, and abs. On Wednesday concentrate on your legs. When Thursday comes then workout your delts and triceps. Let Friday be the day that you workout all major muscle groups. If there are some areas that need special attention and aren’t developing as you like then concentrate on that. Make sure that you do different exercises Friday than you did during the early part of the week. This will help address certain muscles that were neglected during your previous workouts.
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