How Muscle Helps You Lose Fat: Key Benefits and Tips - REVO Fitness

Weight gain or loss is based on energy balance, meaning calories consumed versus calories burned. When starting a weight loss plan, it's crucial to focus on losing fat rather than just weight. This is because focusing solely on losing weight can overlook the importance of muscle, and here's why muscle is so vital in this process. 

Muscle Burns Calories

Muscle is an active tissue that helps keep our metabolism accelerated. In fact, over 60% of our total caloric expenditure (the calories our body needs daily to perform vital functions) comes from our basal metabolic rate, which largely depends on how much muscle mass we have. Therefore, strength training to build muscle mass is optimal for accelerating metabolism.

Additionally, in terms of energy utilization from food, particularly carbohydrates, muscle has a greater capacity to store and use this energy as glycogen during workouts and throughout the day. Carbohydrates play a crucial role during weight training, making it another reason to focus on maintaining good muscle tone and engaging in strength training.