Burning fat and building muscles

Weight loss and muscle building are two widely divergent fitness goals involving different exercise and diet requirements as well as widely different biochemical processes. A large number of people wonder whether it is really possible to lose unwanted body fat and build rock-hard muscles at the same time. Burning of fat and building of muscles involve two different metabolic functions with absolutely contrasting requirements. While muscle building requires you to consume more dietary calories than what you can burn in a day, weight loss requires fewer calories intake than what gets exhausted each day. The process of losing weight and building muscles are interconnected. You will need to first damage your muscles to a certain extent through your workouts and then replenish them with lots of protein rich diet and ample rest to allow your muscles to recover and grow back healthy.

You may even need to use muscle building supplements along with your diet to meet the increasing nutrient requirements of your growing body. As you develop more muscles, your body's metabolic rate increases because muscles are inherently very active tissues. As a result of the high metabolic rate, the fat burning process gets hastened and your body begins to lose all the unwanted fat. If you are aiming at burning fat and building muscles at the same time, you must be able to source all the energy that your body needs (to build new muscles) from the fat stored in your body instead of sourcing it from the proteins (which is required for building muscles) and carbohydrates (which is required to meet your immediate energy needs) present in your body. If your aim is to build powerful muscles, then you would need to take a high calorie and high protein diet, coupled with the correct resistance exercises to stimulate the multiple cells involved in muscle tissue development, along with adequate amount of rest to stimulate repair, recovery and growth of muscles. During every single workout, try to increase the intensity of your workout by implementing the principle of "progressive overload".

When you increase the intensity of your workout, you can start noticing you muscles getting stronger and bigger. The rigorous exercises undertaken by your body will cause a lot of wear and tear and therefore, you will need to take a lot of rest in order to facilitate repair and growth of the muscle tissues in your body. It is recommended that you take at least 2 days of rest between subsequent workouts. However, if muscle building is not your only priority, and you want to achieve both weight loss and muscle building goals, then you must adopt a different strategy. You must try to burn the excess body fat by taking a low fat diet and maintain the lean body mass by consuming a high protein diet (at least 2 gm/kg of body weight is recommended). You can even adjust the amount of protein intake depending on the intensity of your workout.

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