The Method Gym in Durham: How to Lose Fat and Gain Muscle
Last week on The Method Personal Training blog, we discussed how our Method uses resistance training and insulin sensitivity to achieve weight loss. Today, we are continuing with part two of this series and will discuss how resistance training paired with proper energy utilization can achieve great weight loss results without losing muscle. Keep reading to learn more about you can get visible results at our private Durham gym!
Fat Loss vs. Muscle Loss
Did you know? Muscle has approximately one third of the energy in the form of available calories as fat! This essentially means that we lose muscle much faster than we do fat on a large calorie deficit diet when you’re not insulin sensitive… So for every pound of fat lost, you could lose several pounds of muscle. Yikes!
At our gym in Durham, we teach our clients that the whole concept of energy in, energy out is in fact, wrong!
The truth of this statement is best illustrated from the popular TV show, The Biggest Loser. On this show, we watch trainers take extremely overweight contestants, who would normally be very insulin resistant, and watch them lose large amounts of weight with a marginal loss of muscle through not only cardio exercise but also through weight resistance. Although this is the most extreme example of weight loss, it’s informative from the perspective of the effectiveness of resistance training for the purpose of saving muscle and preventing muscle loss while also losing weight.
Let’s break this down a little further.
The Method Gym: How to Lose Weight and Gain Muscle
We’ve all heard the following statement: If you want to lose weight, there is no other way to do it than to create an energy deficit. Yes, the majority of that deficit will need to be created through a reduction of calories consumed. However, that begs the question, why can’t you just exercise yourself to lower body fat?
While you can certainly exercise yourself to less body weight, your body won’t just lose fat just because you go to the gym. Your body’s job is to help you survive and it will only build muscle or a six pack unless it sees a necessary role for that muscle in your every day life.
On the other hand, fat has an adaptive role. It is the most effective way for your body to store excess glucose safely, and prevent you from dying of starvation. For those reasons, our bodies are trained to keep storing fat. The only way to change that conditioning is to give it the need for sustained muscle and a diet change.
In order for this change to be effective, one must exert effort and energy into building and maintaining as much muscle as possible. This increase in muscle will allow the body to burn more calories throughout the day. Therefore, the more muscles that you have the more calories you burn during and after physical activity. And, the more muscle that you have, the more glucose can be shuttled to those muscles instead of sent to the liver to be made into fat!
The result? More muscle and less fat.
If you’re ready to create this change and start losing fat instead of muscle, our private gym in Durham offers smart, effective, and safe personal training that gets results.
Want to get started? Contact our private Durham gym today!
