How to Get Lean Muscle : "Aerobics is the Best Way to Lose Weight" - Truth or Myth?

This article is bound to make a few people angry. If you're someone who has an intermediate understanding of how to get lean muscle, then you might have heard that the best way to lose fat is to do boring cardio, exercises that make you puffed out like treadmill or the bicycle. I'm going to try and persuade you today that you're wrong and that the best way to lose fat is the exactly the same way you gain muscle: by lifting weights.

A lot of people know that you only have to do one thing, keep one thing in mind if you're trying to cut fat from your body, no matter the exercise: the calories you put in have to be less than the calories you put out. The biochemical backing for this is that when the calories you put in are less than those you put out, you're in an "energy deficit". Your body will turn to your emergency energy supplies, ie. fat, to keep it functioning properly. Good. Keep that in mind. What kind of exercise is cardio? It's a kind of aerobic exercise, which means oxygen is required (and a heck of a lot of it, I might add). You breathe heavily while doing cardio, but how long does it take for you to recover and breathe normally again? Depending on your stamina and fitness levels, it could be anywhere from a couple of minutes to five minutes. After that, your body returns to equilibrium and stops burning fat. So yes, cardio does burn fat. The thing is, it also burns muscle. All the men preparing for modelling competitions by doing cardio a few weeks before the show are jeopardizing their chances for getting a medal position!

If only there was a way someone could lose fat and retain the muscle that they had or even better yet, lose the fat they had and GAIN more lean muscle, SIMULTANEOUSLY. And there is. By lifting weights.

Weight lifting has been commonly attributed to the exercise that helps you gain lean muscle mass (in conjunction with sufficient rest and diet). But weight lifting in a certain manner will help you trim down as well. Let me explain. If you're an experienced weight lifter and know how to get lean muscle, you know you can only get it during the rest phase of your work out (that's right, you should actually count chilling out as part of your workout!). While you're sleeping, your muscle is "repackaging" itself, metabolizing all the protein you've consumed and turning it into muscle for you to use. Of course, that isn't the only thing it's metabolizing. Depending on how tiring your work out was, energy can burn at a quick rate, even hours after the work out.

If the energy you used up is less than the energy you took in, you will lose fat. So that means essentially for every work out, make sure the energy you take in is less than the energy you lose and you can and will, lose fat and gain muscle. This is the basis of it.