Muscle Vs. Fat – The Benefits of Building Lean Muscle
If you have recently started working out, and the scale isn’t budging, or even worse, it keeps going up, but your clothes are fitting better and you are feeling smaller, don’t be discouraged.
The scale is just one tool used to measure your weight loss progress. A greater indicator is the way your body is changing and how your clothes are fitting. Before you toss the scale out the window there is a bit of critical information you must learn about Fat vs. Muscle.
Did you know that even though 5 lbs of muscle and 5 lbs of fat weigh the same, if you put them on the scale together fat takes up so much more mass then the same weight in muscle? This photo shows a clear picture of the difference in their mass. Sometimes your weight may not adjust much but when you replace fat with muscle you will be so much smaller and tighter.
Another benefit of building lean muscle is the amount of resources (calories) it consumes to maintain. Your body really does burn more calories maintaining muscle than it does maintaining fat. Which means that building muscle increases your metabolism.