99% of Women Don’t Know This

Something that surprises me a lot working in a gym is how few women actually know how their body works.

Especially when it comes to fat loss.

(I say women only because I don’t spend much time talking to the guys about it).

For example, did you know the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn just sitting on the sofa?

No? Don’t worry you’re in good company. So far 99% of the women I have spoken to didn’t know either.

So, here’s a whistle stop tour of how it all works:

Calories

This is the energy we get from food and is essential for life.

BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate)

This is the number of calories our body needs every day to survive, to keep our basic functions ticking over, like breathing, digestion, and all that unseen work our body does even if all we do is sit on the sofa all day.

Calories in vs Calories out

This is the equation that takes into account how many calories we burn and how many we need to eat in order to:

Lose weight, gain weight or maintain our current weight.

So let’s say, as often happens after years of dieting and hammering the cardio, your metabolism has slowed down and your BMR, the amount you need to eat to maintain your basic functions, is now 1200 calories a day.

In order to lose weight you need to eat LESS than 1200 calories a day.

In order to gain weight you need to eat MORE than 1200 calories a day.

And in order to stay where you are you need to eat an average of 1200 calories a day.

That’s if you spend all day on the sofa!

(If you have a very active lifestyle, and that means a job where you are on your feet all day and at least 5 heavy sessions in the gym, it will be slightly more and that’s when the calories in vs calories out equation is used to determine your BMR)

BTW 1200 calories looks like this:

Now consider this:

Muscle is very thermogenic, this means it needs a lot of calories (food) to stay alive even when it’s not moving, in fact for every extra pound of muscle you put on you need to eat an extra 80 calories a day to stop it from wasting away.

So if you put on an extra 5lbs pounds of muscle through proper training you will burn an extra 400 calories EVERY DAY JUST SITTING ON THAT SOFA.

Crazy that no ones knows this right?

BTW, if you’re worried about ‘putting on weight’ and don’t know what 5lbs of muscle looks like consider this:

(Replacing fat with lean muscle is what gives you a nice ‘toned’ appearance)

Plus, when you then do some cardio you will burn loads more calories because you have more muscle working hard to move your body, which requires even more calories to keep it going.

So, to recap, increased lean muscle mass leads to:
An increased BMR. And an increased BMR means you will need more calories just for your basic functions which means the more you need to eat every day.
More efficient fat burning when you do cardio, which leads to:

A sexy, toned appearance

And we’re not talking big bulky man muscles here, we talking sexy, curvaceous, feminine muscles.

Increased strength and muscle mass (which go hand in hand) are also linked to a whole host of health benefits.

So if you want to look and feel great, lose weight and eat more while doing it, it’s time to ditch the treadmill and start lifting weights!