When you hear the word fat burning, the first thing you probably think of is the many diets and lifestyles that promise to make your weight drop. Even though most diets work if you follow them, there is another way to get rid of annoying fat deposits. Of the many fat burning topics you can read about, such as insulin sensitivity, low carb, keto or even whole30, there is one quite simple fact that is often forgotten when it comes to losing weight. Your muscles burn calories permanently and are a major determinant of your basal metabolic rate. Here you can find out how they do this and how you can use it to burn fat.
Your body needs enough energy for every organ and every muscle to keep them functional. The bigger a muscle is, the more energy it needs. Your daily calorie requirement therefore increases when you build up muscles, not only through training, but also by providing larger muscles with more energy when they are at rest. So you literally burn fat while you sleep. At rest, your muscles are responsible for about 26% of your energy consumption. You can also effectively lose fat by reducing your calorie intake (diet), simply increasing your basal metabolic rate (increased muscle percentage).
Like most other cells in our body, muscle cells also possess mitochondria, which supply the cells with energy. They convert fats and carbohydrates into adenon triphosphate, or ATP for short, which is the fuel for all our movements. If you train your muscles and push them to the limit, your body will increase these small power plants to provide the muscle with more energy. More power plants also mean more energy needed. As a comparison, you can imagine a motor that also needs energy when idling. This means that even if the many new motors do not work constantly, they need more and more energy permanently. But since you don't change anything in your diet or your calorie intake, you quickly fall into a slight calorie deficit and your body begins to use its fat reserves as energy suppliers. The result is less fat without having to eat less or limit your diet.
In contrast to the fat reduction by a diet, the fat reduction by more muscle mass by a hypertrophy training has some important advantages which I would like to briefly describe to you.
First of all, of course, there's the fact that you don't have to change anything about your diet. You can just go on eating like before and don't have to worry if you eat too many calories with every meal. This saves you a lot of work planning your diet and doesn't force you to limit your eating. Diets always require a lot of discipline and are usually limited and therefore often do not offer a long-term solution. Although you need a calorie surplus to build up your muscles effectively, if you only want to burn fat, it is enough to ensure a sufficient protein intake so that your muscles can build up slowly and you can lose fat at the same time.
Another important advantage of this approach is its low susceptibility to the yo-yo effect. If you reduce your calorie intake too much, your body will quickly start to reduce its basal metabolic rate. After you finish a diet and start loosening it, your calorie intake will quickly exceed your calorie requirements and your fat reserves will quickly return to where they were before the diet.
The third reason in favour of muscle building training as fat burning is the health and aesthetic benefits of such training. Muscles not only improve your hormone production but also how you look under your clothes. If you want to find out more about the benefits of more muscle mass, look here.
The last essential reason is sustainability. Your muscles help you burn more energy permanently. Every hour and every minute of your day, whether at work, at night or in the shower. Your muscles are constantly burning more calories and can protect you from getting fat.
In summary, it can be said that muscle-building training is advisable for anyone who wants to lose fat effectively and long-term. Of course, you must be aware that the training also costs a lot of work and the fat reserves do not disappear by themselves. Of course, you can't suddenly eat what you want and expect your muscles to burn all the calories you consume miraculously. A balanced and healthy diet should never be missing. Remember also that fat loss does not mean weight loss. So if you suddenly gain weight because you've built up muscles, that's progress. So always measure your fat percentage, because you can gain weight and lose fat.
Maybe you've heard of the afterburning effect before. The afterburning effect is also known as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), which generally means increased oxygen consumption after exercise. Your body needs more oxygen for a short period of time than usual after sport and thus has an increased metabolic activity. This increased metabolic activity ultimately results in an increased basal metabolic rate or calorie consumption during this period. How strong the afterburning effect is depends on the length and above all the intensity with which a workout is carried out, but also the stress level during the workout is an important influencing factor.
The afterburning effect is divided into the following three phases:
Phase 1: Immediately after the workout
Here the energy reserves of the muscles are first recharged. ATP and creatine phosphate are recharged and more haemoglobin and myoglobin are formed. In the meantime, the released stress hormones are reduced.
This is where the body begins protein synthesis. The body converts proteins into amino acid compounds in order to renew and enlarge damaged structures in the muscle. This also requires energy.
Even if the muscles have been sufficiently supplied with protein, there is still an increased muscle tension. This also means that more calories are burned and the basal metabolic rate is still slightly higher.
Even if it is very difficult to make a general statement about how many additional calories are banished by the afterburning effect, as this depends on the individual training intensity and other factors, you can significantly increase your calorie requirement beyond the period of training through intensive units. If you really want to benefit from EPOC in terms of increased calorie consumption, then you have to regularly build in very intensive phases into your training. A really measurable afterburning effect only occurs when the muscles are trained to the point of exhaustion.
I hope you have learned in this article that muscles can be the perfect helpers when it comes to reducing your body fat due to their high energy requirements. They permanently burn more calories, make you more attractive and improve your hormonal balance. Training to build muscle in combination with a balanced and moderate diet is therefore the best way to reduce your body fat in the long term.
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Marc graduated from the DSHS Cologne and the KIT with a master's degree in sports science. His personal trainer background and more than 14 years of training experience contribute to his expertise.
