You’ve probably already figured out that you can’t build muscle by doing a lot of cardio work.  It takes working out with weights in order to build muscle and lose fat more quickly and without difficulty.  Lifting weights isn’t done just so that you look better; you probably want to know if there are health benefits to having chiseled and toned muscles through the use of weight lifting.

In fact, you can build muscle, lose fat and help your bones immensely by lifting weights and doing bodybuilding.  When you lift weights, your bones are forced to thicken and strengthen in order to bear the weight load.  It works better than just running because it increases the strength of both the upper and lower body bones.  Running can actually promote muscle breakdown and weaken bones, while weight lifting gradually builds both muscle tone and bone strength.

When you build muscle, lose fat and strengthen your bones, your degree of injuries is much less.  You strengthen the connective tissue so that you don’t suffer as many strains and sprains from muscle or ligament damage.  You are less likely to break a bone from wear and tear on the bones.  A total of 80 percent of all injuries when working out include injuries that are the direct result of muscles, ligaments and tendons not being as strong as they need to be when a force is applied to it.  Because training with weights involves deep tendon stressors, it is good for these tendons to be deeply involved with strength training—from simple weights all the way up to heavy weights.

When you build muscle, lose fat and strength bone, there are other health related risk factors that are improved along with these things.  This includes an improvement in blood pressure, a reduction in heart disease, cancer reduction and insulin resistance improvement.  Cancers like prostate cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer and female uterine cancer are reduced when you reduce the percentage of fat in your body.

In order to build muscle, lose fat and strengthen bone, you need to consider dietary ways of reducing the fat gain in your body.   Your metabolism goes up when you are working out with a lot of weights so, in order not to lose weight, you need to eat more food to keep your muscle weight up.  Protein drinks, high protein foods, such as dairy, meat, nuts and beans can be foods that keep your weight up and put those extra calories into muscles.
Using a method to build muscle and lose weight will not cause you to bulk up in an unnatural way as long as you eat a healthy high protein diet and work out with weights that stress your muscles to be ripped and hard.  While you want to be a hundred percent muscle, you don’t have to expect that, as long as you’re not doing steroids or other illegal substances, your muscles will be freakishly big.

Don’t underestimate the need to eat plenty of low fat calories in order to build muscle, lose weight and strengthen bone.  Calories are like the bricks you need to build a house: the more you eat, the bigger the house will be.  Bodybuilders look the way they do because they take in enough calories to promote the size and strength of their muscles.  You can look that way, too, and not skinny with wimpy muscles if you eat the number of calories you need to have strong and powerful muscles.