Gaining Muscle on the Treadmill

     Losing weight is a worthy goal for us all, especially as Americans have continued to gain more and more weight, raising the average Joe or Jane to overweight, with even children becoming considerably too overweight each year. Losing weight is important-however, so is gaining muscles.

There is no reason why losing weight should take more of a priority than increasing the amount of muscle in your body. It will help to increase your balance, keep you flexible, and give you strength you never knew you had.

Sometimes we get so single minded about losing the weight we need to lose that we put all of our efforts into restricting our calorie intake with a strict diet and forget to pay attention to the physical side of how our bodies work. The process can be greatly enhanced by giving some of that attention over to the way our muscles can be our most important weapons in the battle to beat the excess weight and one of the most useful weight loss tips in that respect.

Here is why this is such an important aspect to losing weight. Our muscles are our body's powerhouse for using the energy that we feed them via our diet.

The stronger and more massive our muscles, the more energy they need to use. So, it makes good common sense to pay attention to maintaining their well being to help us in maintaining a healthy weight.

Although muscle tissue weighs more than fat by volume, it is actually more muscle tissue that we ought to be aiming for when we want to lose weight. Now at first that might sound to be a backwards way of thinking.

Why would we want to weigh more when we want to weigh less? The answer is that when we aim to lose weight, what we are really aiming for is a slimmer, healthier body with a lot less fat stored in the places we would rather be looking trim and toned.

In order to burn that store of fat most efficiently, we need our muscles to demand more energy to burn so that our bodies are forced to provide that energy by taking it from the stored up fat. For our muscles to demand more energy, they need to be working more.

This is normally done through exercise. But when we build our muscle strength and mass through regular exercise where we push our muscles hard, then they will demand more and more energy as we go.

This is exactly what we want when we decide to lose weight, because the end result will be a much reduced level of stored fat, while our muscles will make our bodies nicely toned, slim and great looking. So, it pays great dividends to ensure that gain muscle to lose weight.

Combined with a healthy, balanced diet we get the body we want and best of all we get to keep it a lot longer than if we'd lost weight through diet alone. Strength training while losing weight can be combined on a treadmill.

If you add an incline to your treadmill routine, you can increase the strength in your muscles considerably. The more your machine is at an incline, the more muscle groups it will engage.

For example, if you put your incline level to a fourteen, you will be engaging your thighs and buttocks. The strength will increase as you push yourself to increase the incline in your treadmill on a regular basis.

Try increasing your incline level by one every two days. If you are walking for at least thirty minutes a day, your strength will increase, particularly if you push yourself into it.

If you are not going to put all you have into your daily workout, you are not going to meet any of your goals. Working hard is the only way to see results-if you expect to workout half heartedly three times a week, do not be surprised when you don't see any results.

However, if you put everything into your routine, keeping it changing on a regular basis, you can see the results of muscle mass increasing in your calves, thighs, hips, butt, stomach, and more.

If you engage your arms pumping while you workout, you will also begin to see results in your upper body strength as well. Get a treadmill today and work toward a strength within your body that you never imagined.

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