Balancing the scale of weight loss and improving fitness can be tricky. Losing weight seems to be a priority in most individual’s fitness goals when first entering a fitness routine to improve their health. The focus on decreasing the number the scale represents is commonly associated with an individual’s ability to restrict how many calories are consumed. Calorie restriction is a useful technique. However, limiting food is a minor component to refine our fitness and quality of life. It’s noteworthy to address how much food we are eating and not necessarily the amount of food we are avoiding.
Maintaining lean muscle mass is critical to strength, injury prevention, balance, and living a productive life. Skeletal muscle is defined as the muscles that attaches to bones and moves them in various planes of motion. The term lean muscle mass refers to the concentration of skeletal muscle in our bodies. The amount of muscle cells within each muscle, the muscular blood vessels ability to harness oxygen for energy, and the nerve to muscle communication dictates the functional quality of lean muscle mass. If muscles lack physical tone, strength, endurance, and the ability to perform fine motor movements, this indicates suboptimal musculature.
In contrast, an optimal status of lean muscle mass elicits sufficient strength, adequate muscular endurance, and coordinated abilities to execute fine motor movement, achieve balance, an avoid injury. Therefore, the muscular architecture of our skeletal muscle is essential to an effective fitness journey. The development and upkeep of lean muscle mass is produced via an effective training program and plenty of physical activity. In order to appreciate the development of lean muscle mass, we not only need to train efficiently and effectively, but we also need to ensure we are consuming enough food responsible for upholding the framework of our lean muscle mass.
Protein and carbohydrates are critical component to lean muscle mass synthesis. Protein acts as the building blocks that lay the framework of the skeletal muscles sorrounding our bones. Carbohydrates produce energy for muscle to grab onto free floating protein in the bloodstream and attach them to sites of muscle that needing repair. This combination of substrates is exceptionally potent when muscle has been stressed after a physically exhausting bout of activity, such as a workout routine.
Muscles use carbohydrates as fuel throughout workouts to activate muscles and move bones throughout exercise. Protein is also used as fuel throughout workouts after carbohydrates and fat have been utilized as energy. This is important to know because without a source of protein before exercise, the body will breakdown the muscle in the skeletal muscle converting the muscle cell to protein so it can then be used as a calorie source of energy. This process of protein breakdown within the muscle cell can cause more stress to the muscle than the exercise session is currently imposing.
Following exercise, protein attaches to stressed sites of muscle induced via exercise to resynthesize muscle to match the demand that strenuous exercise and physical activity imposed on the body. Therefore, carbohydrate and protein are critical for lean muscle mass development when performing regular exercise.
This explanation sheds light upon how the body uses calories throughout exercise and after exercise. The take home message is to ensure the body has a sufficient amount of protein and carbohydrate source before and after workout sessions to support optimal lean muscle mass. The more lean muscle concentration on the body, the less fat mass the body will have. The scale might reflect the weight of the body hasn’t decreased when lean muscle mass has been developed, but that’s because muscle cells are denser than fat cells. There is more water and blood within muscle cells than in fat cells. Therefore, eating before and after exercise sessions is a good thing. Not only is it recommended to eat before and after workouts, but consumption of a healthy form of carbohydrate and protein is critical for lean muscle mass development and fat reduction. Make sure to consume enough food surrounding your workouts outs. A body that has sufficient musculature will burn more unwanted fat and function properly to help us improve our overall quality of life.
Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.
