Burning Fat Ang Gaining Muscle Essay, Research Paper

Burning Fat and Gaining Muscle

Despite what people may say, every person would improve his or her body composition if he or she could do so easily. However, as I know from personal experience, making even minimal improvements in your athleticism requires great effort and dedication. Many people spend over an hour out of their day to either maintaining their physique or improving it. Since this is a fair amount of time, the three basic keys to improving a physique should be learned. These keys are the following: maintaining a proper diet, strength training, and dedication to cardiovascular activity.

Proper dieting is perhaps the most important factor in obtaining a lean body, but dieting doesn t mean starving yourself. The body needs a constant flow of nutrients and energy to increase metabolism. Keeping a high metabolism is the key to burning away fat. Your metabolism determines the rate at which your body burns calories, so if you have a fast metabolism, you will burn calories with out much effort. Anyone interested in losing body fat should intake around ten times their body weight in calories. One should also eat multiple meals a day instead of eating three big meals. This allows time to digest food thoroughly and prevents metabolism from falling too much. Surprisingly fat is also required for a toned body, but stay away from saturated fat because this can lead to clogged arteries. The other important factor in repairing and gaining muscle is protein. Protein is the building block of muscle.

Weight training is essential and mandatory to building muscle mass. By having muscle mass you can accelerate your fat loss program. Muscle burns calories much faster than fat. This is true because lifting increases your metabolic rate. In order to putting on the most muscle weight to burn calories, one should try to stick with training the largest muscles in the body. These muscles are the thighs, back, and chest. Working each muscle group at a minimum of two times a week should build enough muscle to greatly increase your caloric burning rate, but one must be sure to avoid over training, which leads to muscle deterioration. Ideally your weight training workouts should not exceed seventy-five minutes per day. One of the most important aspects of bodybuilding is rest. An athlete should get at least eight hours of sleep every night. This is key to repairing the muscle fibers that you tore during your workout.

Another method that greatly aids in fat loss and muscle tone is good cardiovascular activity. The great thing about doing cardio is that you do not only burn calories during your workout, but that calorie burning effect lasts with you throughout the day. The ideal time to do cardio is in the morning before breakfast. That way you burn fat rather than the meal you just ate. Doing this only three times per week and twenty minutes per session will suffice, as long as the session is intense enough for the individual s fitness level.

The keys to improving your overall fitness level are simple, yet many people waste countless hours in trying to reach their goals without first learning about the basics. When faced with any sort of challenge, it is very important to plan out a strategy in order to achieve maximum success.