We all know that diet and exercise are key components in a healthy lifestyle. You need to eat a balanced diet of 5 different food groups as well as incorporate aerobic (cardiovascular) exercise into your daily routine. Proper exercise is as vital to our health as the food and drink we provide our bodies for fuel”we need to correctly meet all of those needs to live a healthier life.
However, there is one important component that needs to be included in order to build that healthy, fit body that youve always wanted, and that thing is strength training. Strength training can reduce your body fat, increase your lean muscle mass, and help you burn calories more efficiently. But what does all of this really mean?
You can calculate it yourself: 1 pound of fat burns 2 calories a day. But 1 pound of muscle burns 6 calories a day ” six times as much! Therefore its logical that if you have more muscle you burn more calories. A lot of people are afraid to get a lot of muscles (especially ladies), but you dont need to look like Arnold did in his golden days as Mister Universe! You can build lean muscle And how long will this take? This depends on a lot of factors, but most people need about three to four months to get 3 to 5 pounds of muscle. And what does this depend on? Well of course your diet, gender, program and last but not least your own DNA… Do some arithmetic for yourself. If you gain 12 pounds of muscle per year, you will burn off 12 x 6 = 72 EXTRA calories per day. Multiply this with 365 and you get 26,280 calories you actually burn off while you sleep…
How do you burn off fat and get muscles? Well, unfortunately you need to burn calories to do this. And each pound will need about 3,500 calories to get rid of. The best thing is if you can include some strength training in your daily ritual and you will be able to lose more or less 7 ” calories over the course of one year. You really have the chance to get a remarkable body this way. If you do strength training together with youre a healthy diet, daily activities and aerobic exercise you will soon see a change. Most important of all is that you will have created a lasting way to lose weight!
Age works against us. Thats why this is so important. Unfortunately as we get older, we also have fewer muscles. And if you dont do any strength training you wont replace the muscle tissue youre losing. And percentage wise you will increase the amount of fat in your body. Thats why the older people get, the more weight they seem to add (especially woman after the change-over).
Strength training has a lot of other advantages: Your bones get stronger because they are stressed during exercise. Also the density increases because of this. And the great thing about this is that you have less chance of getting osteoporosis! You have less chance of injury, look better, feel better and more self assured ” surely this is a win-win situation all round! You also have less chance of being depressed and you will notice that you sleep a lot better than you ever have before.
Of course youre thinking that this will cost you a lot of money as you have to go to a gym and pay a membership. But you can also use free weight such as dumb bells and special tubing for resistance. Or use your own body weight. Be creative!
