If you’re a fitness enthusiast looking for the secret to burning calories, you’ve probably read hundreds of articles, many of which offer poor advice. From touting the benefits of intense exercise throughout the week and recommending vague supplements to boost metabolism and muscle building, there’s a lot of advice on the internet. Some may suggest boosting metabolism by increasing muscle mass to lose weight.
Now you may be wondering whether enhancing muscle growth affects your metabolism. Below, we discuss whether the notion is true and how you can effectively increase muscle mass.
A Short Overview on Positive Impact of Muscle Mass on Metabolism
Increasing muscle mass increases metabolism. But here’s the thing; it isn’t by a significant amount. In fact, extensive research proves that your body burns about four to seven calories per day for every new pound of muscle.
Now, if you do the math, it means if your goal was to burn a hundred calories per day, you’d need to earn at least ten to twenty pounds of muscle every single day. Not only is that insanely challenging, but it’s also impossible.
It means your metabolism goes up, but not by a very substantial number.
Understanding the Concept of Speeding Up Your Metabolism
Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) refers to the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide you inhale and exhale after, respectively, when lying down after exercising. It means RMR is a vital factor in determining your weight.
Moreover, your metabolism depends on factors like sex, age, height, weight, and body composition. Yet, people sharing those features may have varying RMR because of differences in internal organs. It means escalating your metabolism is a challenging, almost impossible task.
So, Does Building More Muscle Increase Your Metabolism?
An exercise physiologist from Atlanta, Katie Heimburger, believes boosting your metabolism is the perfect way to cut down copious amounts of calories. Moreover, Tim Church, a professor at Pennington Biomedical Research Centre at LSU, says that a particular person’s basal metabolic rate (BMR) depends on various factors. It entails your sex, genetics, age, and so on. Your internal organs play an immense role in defining your metabolism rate.
Although RMR and BMR are interchangeably used, BMR is the least number of calories the body requires to function, while RMR is the number of calories the body uses during the resting phase.
Moreover, building muscle mass is another factor that can change your metabolism rate. You may find it a waste of time, but you’ll gain fantastic and useful muscles while burning a considerable number of calories in a day. Moreover, slowly but surely, your metabolism will increase as well.
More Muscle Mass Means Calories Burnt
Dr. Church continues by saying that his (and team) intensive study shows that every hard-earned muscle burns an average of six calories per day. Moreover, calculations show that the result is three times greater than one pound of fat. Ultimately, you burn at least two calories each day.
Now while the calories you burn per pound of muscle aren’t that significant, the amount of time and work you invest into sculpting solid muscles will still have a positive result on your body. Somerset explains to Born Fitness that when you work towards increasing muscle mass, the process will help you burn more calories than the addition of muscle mass itself.
Three Best Ways to Enhance Muscle Mass for Increasing Metabolism
Increasing muscle mass can be a challenging task, but it isn’t impractical. Here’s how you can effectively enhance your muscles:
Building Muscle Mass Through Strength or Resistance Training
Jamey McGee- a fitness director from Wellness Centre at Meadowmont, says that strength-training is an excellent way to increase muscle mass. It is recommended to do weight training twice a week and here, you may consider using free weights, weight machines, resistance bands, and such. After your training, your body works super hard to repair muscle tissues, which increases caloric burn. Such exercise increases metabolism by promoting a lean body mass.
Follow a Healthy Diet
Following a healthier diet can boost your metabolism as well. However, most ‘diet’ items like green tea, hot chili peppers, and so on only increase metabolism by a low amount.
However, a better way to combat this is by choosing nutritious and tasty foods such as meat, fish, eggs, legumes, nuts, and seeds that fill your stomach while ensuring you don’t gain additional pounds.
Building a Goal
Finally, set an achievable goal in a particular time frame. Besides this, track your current exercise plan and try to expand the duration of time, the amount of exercise you perform, and the intensity of each.
All in all, you’ll notice progress and an increase in muscle mass.
How EPOC Increases Your Metabolism
Your metabolism increases and stays up after every strength-training session. The process is known as Excess Postexercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC), otherwise known as the afterburn effect.
Moreover, the process includes your body taking in oxygen and energy- present as calories- to help you quickly and effectively recover. Extensive research in the field shows that strength training is the best way to increase EPOC as it effectively increases physiological stress. On the flip side, EPOC majorly depends on your exercise’s intensity.
An in-depth study shows that the lady’s basal metabolic rate moved to a remarkable 4.2 percent in a total of 16 hours. It was due to a strength-training session lasting an hour and forty minutes. While that isn’t exactly a huge number, the calories burnt through EPOC may spike up with time.
Increase Muscle Mass with Professional Personal Trainer
No matter if you’re a novice or have been training for years, increasing muscle mass requires following a diligently crafted exercise plan curated to your body’s unique needs. Here at Body and Way of Life Fitness, we can offer just that! Our personal trainers are highly skilled and experienced in working with children, men, and women of all ages. Contact us today for a consult.