Gaining muscle is not the most effective way to increase your metabolism and lose body fat. Many people are misled into thinking that it is. There are better and more effective ways to burn body fat and lose weight, though. Gaining muscle is good, but won’t help you lose weight. Let’s take a look at some simple facts.

More Body Fat, More Calories Burned?

Sounds crazy, but it’s true. One pound of fat burns two calories per day. It adds up; 10 pounds of fat burns 20 calories, and so on. Now, of course you don’t want to gain weight to burn calories, that’s ridiculous. But, this just happens to be one of the lesser-known metabolic facts that illustrates how misled people can be. Everything is not quite as it appears!

How Many Calories Does Muscle Burn?

Medical professionals don’t agree on an exact number, but, muscle burns somewhere in the ball park of 5-6 additional calories per day. Think about it, this is not a huge number at all. As you keep reading, you’ll realize just how insignificant this number is. Muscle really doesn’t increase your metabolism as much as you’ve been led to believe.

Let's Put This Into Perspective

If someone loses 20 pounds of fat, they will burn 40 LESS calories per day. A 10 pound muscle gain would burn 60 calories per day. A person who had this type of body composition change would burn a grand total of 20 more calories per day! If that same person lost 20 pounds of fat and gained 20 pounds of muscle, they would only increase their daily calories burned by 80 total calories! Not exciting at all!

How Many Calories Burned to Lose a Pound of Fat?

You might not like this little tidbit. You will need to burn 3,500 calories to lose a pound of fat. At a rate of 20 extra calories per day, this is never going to make a dent in your overall body composition. So, the incredible amounts of time spent trying to gain muscle can be spent differently for better results. This "gaining muscle" approach to fitness is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Hard cardio can easily burn 600 calories. If you are not trying to build muscle at the same time, you can also reduce your daily caloric intake by 600 calories. By doing this, you will maintain the muscle you have and continue to lose weight. Do the math: this combination can burn 1,200 calories per day! Now, while this is grossly oversimplified, the facts are there. Compared with the body composition calculations above for gaining muscle, this is 60 times as many calories burned.

Combination of Cardio and Diet is Best

Clearly there are other factors involved, but the bottom line is that a combination of good cardio and good diet is the best, most effective way to lose fat. Burning more calories burns fat. Working hard at gaining muscle is not the best way to get your body lean and defined. Focus on the facts, and get effective strategies in place if you want to see results.