Find Out How to Burn Fat With Muscle

Muscle is the secret weapon to burn body fat permanently. Muscle looks much better than fat. Muscle is what makes a body chiseled, solid looking athletic. Fat on the other hand covers up the muscles with a thick layer of spongy insulation. Fat fills in all the lines that separate different muscles groups. Building muscle not only looks good but it makes a big difference whilst trying to lose fat.

Muscles are like a furnace that just keeps burning calories. It takes a lot of calories even to maintain muscle, so the more muscle you have the more calories you burn even whilst surfing on the web or watching TV. Unfortunately nobody really pays ant attention to the amount of muscles they have. Too many people only use the scale but the scale doesn´t tell you how much fat or lean body mass you have. Stepping on the scale every single day can be counter-productive. The scale weight can fluctuate wildly on a daily basis based on your water levels. For someone who gets frustrated very quickly then that can be very hard to take.

If you want to achieve permanent fat loss and stop yo-yo dieting then you need to judge your progress based on lean body mass and body fat not by the scale alone. A very popular method to determine your ideal weight is using height and weight chart. But they are very misleading, especially to athletes and bodybuilders who carry more muscle than most people. a 6 foot 2 inch, 235 pound bodybuilder would be seriously obese according to this method. But bodybuilders fat percentage can be 3-4 percent. "Ideal weights" from height-weight tables don't take body fat into consideration. Losing weight is not the same thing as losing fat. It is good to lose fat but bad if you lose muscle.

Body Mass Index (BMI) is another popular way to determine whether someone is at a healthy weight. But BMI along with the height and weight chart is also not very accurate. You are considered overweight if you're female with a BMI is 27.3 or greater or if you're male with a BMI of 27.8 or higher. But the BMI also doesn´t include muscle mass and fat separately. Bodybuilders and other athletes carry more lean body mass than the average person and will therefore be classified as overweight if BMI is used as the criteria for measurement.

The only way to know your body composition is to measure your fat percentage. So you can monitor your progress and get continual feedback. A weekly body composition test allows you to measure and record the exact effect your nutrition and exercise program is having on your body. By far the most accurate, cheapest and comfortable way to measure your fat percentage is using skinfold testing. The real value in knowing your body fat percentage is as a tool to monitor progress in terms of pounds of fat and pounds of muscle.

Example:

You weigh 200 pounds and you have 25% body fat.
Multiply your body fat by your weight to find lbs. of fat:
200x0.25= 50 pounds of fat
200-50= 150 pounds of lean body mass.

The goal is to lose fat not lean body mass. It is very common to see weight losses of three to five pounds in the first week when you start a new nutrition and exercise program. That happens because water is also part of lean body mass. If your lean body mass decreases a little in a few weeks then that is normal. But after that your goal should be losing fat not lean body mass. It is even better if you could increase your lean body mass because then you would burn more calories and lose fat quicker.