When people want to lose weight, they usually go to the extremes as starving themselves. However, starving usually ends up your body having a lower source of energy and, as a result; the body eats up its own muscles to compensate for the low energy level.

This phenomenon is called muscular atrophy.  Muscle atrophy results to a person having a reduced weight due to the diminishing muscle mass. Oftentimes, people consider this as weight loss but if you ask me, this is nothing more than your body’s reaction to extremely low levels of energy.

However, if an individual wants to lose weight effectively, he or she needs to build his own muscles to burn fats. In fact, people who do a little bit of weight lifting are 21% to 27% likely to have their weights reduced and burn fat compared to people who do not do any lifting exercises at all. The key here is that if you lift weights, you are also increasing the muscles in your body. Moreover, eating proteins also help to build the muscle and also helps you to burn fats effectively.  How does increased muscle mass help in burning the body fat?

The more muscles you have, the more muscle cells can consume the stored fats in the body. Simply put, the more muscles that you have, the higher your metabolism gets. This means that if you are just sleeping, you still lose weight over a person who does not exercise at all. No wonder why men who spend so many hours in the gym can chow down large quantities of food without worrying about gaining a pound or two.

However, it is important to maintain a good muscle mass if you want to stay in the current shape that you is in. If you were to stop doing your weight lifting training, chances are that you will lose some of those muscles thereby the possibility of gaining those dreaded extra pounds in your body.