Tell me if this sounds familiar. Person A realizes that they've gained 10lbs. "oh no!"
Person A reduces their calories, tries not to "eat bad", and goes to the gym.
The weight room is uncomfortable and unfamiliar, so they hit the treadmill/ellipticle.
Person A loses 8lbs before slowly stopping at the gym.
Weight creeps back over the next few months - "oh no!"
Repeat.
It seems that most people take a short term view of exercise and weight loss. They see the weight, want to get rid of it ASAP, and then gain it all back within the year.
95% of people who lose weight quickly will gain it back, generally with a little extra for good measure.
That's because the advice of "just diet and exercise" isn't a good long term solution. The better solution is to start a slow process of fat loss and muscle gain. This will take longer, but if maintained well, can last for life.
But what about the natural slow down as I get older?
Researchers have actually shown us that after the age of 25, your base metabolic rate (BMR) starts to slow down, and does so at a fairly consistent rate until we die.
The strange thing is that the rate of metabolic decrease isn't as high as everyone thinks. Less than 0.04% per year, or 4% per decade.
So this means that a 30 year old 180lb male with an BMR of 1824 calories per day, would only see a decrease of 10 calories per day in his BMR.
All other things being equal, this would mean that after a year, you would have held on to an additional 3,650 calories, which is approximately 1lb.
What does muscle have to do with metabolism?
There are a lot of wild theories about how many calories a pound of muscle burns, ranging from 4 all the way to 50.
On the flip side, to maintain 1lb of bodyfat takes between 2-3 calories per day.
With these numbers, you can start to see that just by increasing muscle by a small amount, we can start reversing the slight decrease in our metabolic rate that occurs over time.
To be totally honest though, these numbers aren't going to make or break your physique. They're actually pretty disappointing, given the energy it takes to build 1lb of muscle.
If you've done the hard work to build 10lbs of extra muscle, hopefully the chances of you sitting around in a puddle of your own filth watching a Netflix marathon for a straight 24 hours are slim.
And our end goal here is not to build muscle so we can sit on the couch. By increasing muscle, we increase our abilities, and GREATLY increase the energy expenditure during exercise.
Muscle + Activity = The Secret
So if 10lbs of muscle is gained and 10lbs of fat is lost, even though the scale reflects that there is no change, not only will you look WAY different, but you'll also have increased your daily energy expenditure by a lot.
Your basic metabolic rate (BMR) will have increased by 80 calories per day, which will amount to 29,200 calories over the year, or an additional 8.5lbs of fat burned in 1 year.
If you're strength training consistently, the additional muscle will also burn an additional 70 calories per hour long session.
If you're training only 4x per week, that still amounts to 14,560 calories per year or, 4lbs.
So even though there's a stigma that people who want to build muscle are vain, and only doing it for how they look (BTW, who cares? Training to look good is a great goal), building an additional 10lbs of muscle can cause a swing of 13lbs over a year's time.
That's 13lbs of fat that you're not carrying around your midsection.
That's an additional 150 light beers you could have drank without worrying about the effect on your physique (just because you can doesn't mean you should).
This extra 10lbs of muscle is an investment in your future and your health. Not only will you look great, but your energy level will be higher, your joints will be pain free, and you'll have less stress about the normal day to day troubles that seem to plague Americans in their 30s and 40s.
How to Build Muscle
•Strength Train 4-6 times per week (puppies not necessary, but encouraged).
•Make sure you're hitting all the movement patterns: Push, Pull, Hinge, Squat, Carry
•Do between 8-20 reps, making sure that you're intense enough to make the last few reps difficult
•Eat slightly more calories than you're burning, putting a high priority on protein.