I have been weight lifting as well as doing cardio because I heard muscle burns more calories than fat. So, I figured I can build muscle and it will help me increase my metabolism which will help me lose fat. However, someone told me that I should not be weight lifting until I get down to my desired weight (which is still long time away). His reasoning was that muscle builds on top of fat so id have to end up burning those muscle in order to trim the fat.

Anyways, can someone clear this up for me or tell me how to build stronger muscles while lose the weight?

So far I have lost over 45 pounds and i did get much stronger however I am afraid that I might end up burning those muscles now that I started doing more cardio.

Thanks a lot for any help and sorry if this is a dumb question

I have never in my life heard that muscle builds on top of fat. I don't know where your friend got that information. I don't really see how that's physically possible.

It isn't really possible to build muscle AND lose weight at the same time, though. Building muscle requires that you take in more calories. Losing weight requires that you limit your caloric intake. Most people who train for weightlifting go through cycles where they burn off fat and then build muscle.

At first it's a tough transition, but it gets easier over time just like everything else when it comes to physical fitness. Part of the reason is, as you said, muscle helps burn fat even when the body is at rest.

I've never faced this particular situation so I'm afraid I can't give you much information on how to go through these cycles, but the information should be pretty easy to find. There is a wealth of fitness knowledge all over the internet. Just Google it and you should get some good results that can at least point you in the right direction.

I hope that helps. Good luck!

It does, but not to the extent most think. It's not going to make or break you, put it that way.

Even if it made a significant difference, building an appreciable amount of muscle while dieting is most likely not going to happen. Muscle growth is a very intensive process... meaning it requires sufficient energy to fuel said growth. When dieting, you don't have enough energy to maintain what you have (hence the weight loss). So adding more of a metabolically active tissue (muscle) is tough to do.

In theory and empirically, people who are very deconditioned or who are carrying a lot of excess fat are best at adding SOME muscle while dieting.

No offense to this 'someone,' but that's one of the most absurd things I've heard in a long while. They have a gross misunderstanding of how the body works.

You don't have to have muscle growth to experience increases in strength. Especially in the beginning.

Maintaining muscle while dieting is pretty simple. Lift sufficient weights and eat adequate protein and don't do stupid volumes of exercise.

yeah i read somewhere that its possible to build some muscles while losing weight in the beginning especially.

i consider myself a beginner since i started working out just 3 months ago.

i do medium weights with 10 reps each set and 12-15 sets per muscle group. i do the same muscle group about twice a week. so far my arms look better (its not as flabby as it used to be) and my chest is getting harder and not flabby.
same thing goes for my back as well.. but i still lost weight..

what would you recommend i do? i read that some people do it in intervals meaning a week they will burn fat the next week they will gain muscle if that makes sense?

i am still 'morbidly obese' so i have about 90 or so pounds to lose. should i just wait until i lose all that weight then start weight training or should i try to tone my body while losing weight?

thanks for your help

by the way this is my schedule usually..
morning - (i wake up around 1130 am cause i work until late nights usually) before eating i go to the gym. i do weight lifting for about 45 minutes. after that i do about 45m-1hr of cardio (elliptical + treadmill) and 30 min of basketball if the gyms open
i come home and eat breakfast after that..

afternoon - i will eat some light snack (fruit or a slice of toast or something)

evening - i will eat a decent sized meal around 7 or 8 pm

night - around 10pm or so ill eat a snack or maybe if im really hungry eat some cereal or something.

i go to sleep around 3 am.

Yup.

Yup.

I'd be interesting seeing exactly what you're doing.

From the sounds of it, it seems too much.

That's primarily more a function of losing fat than anything else.

That would be inefficient IMO.

There's about a million things I want to say to this post. Either what you're saying is scattering my thoughts or I'm just scatter brained today. But toning is a fuction of losing fat. Not lifting weights.

The benefit you receive from resistance training when trying to lose fat has to do with your metabolism.

If you try to lose weight through dieting alone, you will lose lean body mass (muscle) along with the fat. As you lose this LBM, your metabolism decreases. So, if you were to fall of the bandwagon and stop dieting, your LBM will be less so your metabolism will not be as high as when you started (which was probably pretty low already). That's why a lot of people who lose weight from calorie restriction alone quite often gain back the weight plus some. Their metabolism has been lowered.

Combining resistance training with dieting helps you maintain your LBM and helps to reset your metabolism so that it functions better. You may/may not put on a few pounds of LBM, but your goal is to maintain it so your metabolism doesn't get out of whack.

I hope that made sense.

This is how I understand this works, I could be way off and if I am, please let me know, I'm here to learn too.

The thing is though, if this person is obese, chances or losing muscle are slim to none.

In this particular instance, I'm not too sure weight training is going to be the catalyst for maintaining metabolic rate.

Actually, I wouldn't be too worried about metabolic slowdown in this context.

Thanks for the feedback Steve, I appreciate it. Can you explain these two statements a bit more for me?

Both statements are fueled primarily from the idea that people carrying around lots of excess fat need not be overly concerned about losing muscle and metabolic slowdowns. Many of the internal 'sensors' that regulate the metabolism and the slowdowns associated with the starvation response are located in our fat stores. In a nutshell, if you have an abundance of fat, you have an abundance of the things that keep your body from thinking you're starving, hence, slowing down your metabolism isn't much a concern.

Thanks for an explanation that is in plain English and understandable.

Anytime.

Weightlifting is one of the best method for reducing weight. Because it helps to increase muscle and cut off unwanted fat content in our body as well as increases metabolism rate. I got more result on increasing muscle while doing weightlifting, my suggestions also do weightlifting on regular basis will give better results on losing weight. All the best for your goal.

You weren't making that post just so you could shove some spam (that ridiculous link) down our throats, were you?

Nah, couldn't be......