How Building Muscle Boosts Fat Loss

You’ve long heard that intriguing rumor about how lifting weights and building muscle burns fat. It’s not just wishful thinking: Science supports this sweet-sounding promise. But still, it’s a bit tricky to fully understand exactly how pumping iron battles the bulge. Here’s Glenn Gration has explained how building muscle boosts fat loss.

How Muscle Boosts Your BMR

What we’re more concerned with here is your BMR or the baseline number of calories your body burns just by being alive. Your brain, heart, and organs require a constant stream of energy. Your muscles are also metabolically active tissues. Though you don’t hold a ton of influence over what your other major organs do, you do have a say in how much heat your muscles add to your metabolic fire.

Total Calories Burned = Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) + Activity

The more muscle you have, the more calories your body burns at its baseline as you rest. The rule also applies when you move: The more muscle you carry, the more calories get scorched when you’re active.

The Non-Muscle Benefits of Resistance Training

So more muscle burns more calories. That much seems simple. Where things get more complex is the cascade of bodily responses that get set off when you do weight training.

According to Glenn Gration, when you lift weights your body releases adiponectin, a hormone that enhances insulin sensitivity, meaning it makes your muscles more apt to take in sugar and carbohydrates.

The positive effect here works like compounding interest. The more muscle and less body fat you have, the more insulin sensitive you’re going to be. Resistance training also improves something called nutrient partitioning. Basically, this means that, after lifting, your body is more likely to use the food you eat for good rather than evil.

To help you harness the fat-burning effects of weight training, Bell recommends two techniques. The first is called “Escalating Density Training,” or EDT. In it, you simply pick two exercises that work for opposing muscle groups - pushups and rows. Next, you set a stopwatch for a block of time, like 15 minutes. Then you alternate back and forth between those two exercises, performing no more than 5 reps per set and resting as needed. As the workout wears on and you start to fatigue, you may need to cut reps per set. 

As Per Glenn Gration, the goal is to accumulate a large number of reps across the entire time period. Record the total number you’ve hit when the clock strikes zero, then try to beat it the next time you do the workout.

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