Let's Get Muscular, Muscular

It's not about weight, it's about fitness, and one component of being fit is to have relatively low body fat, because fat is not very efficient, whereas muscle is. --Deborah Bull

Over the past month I've done a relatively good job getting my diet on a healthy track. I've had my alcohol induced slip ups here and there, but nothing very serious. I'm finding, however, that I'm not losing weight as quickly as I'd like, though I do see increased muscle definition.

How many times have you heard that muscle weighs more than fat? For those people who are dieting and working out and hop on the scale and see they've put in all that effort only to gain weight the muscle fat argument is infinitely popular. But is it true?

According to Google Answers muscle is almost 20% heavier than fat but what's more important is the fact that muscle burns more calories than fat. Information on exrx.net details that one pound of muscle can burn 30 to 50 Calories a day whereas one pound of fat burns only 3 Calories a day. So if you replace 10 lbs of body fat with 10 lbs of muscle, you might just be looking at burning an extra 370 calories a day, or basically 39 lbs a year.

That's enough to make me start a weight training routine.