Gain Muscle to Lose Fat

When most people think about losing weight or shedding fat, their first instinct is often to hit the treadmill or dive into aerobic workouts. But what if the real secret to fat loss is gaining muscle? On this episode of the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast, Jerred Moon breaks down the science and explains why muscle mass is your most powerful tool for burning fat and achieving sustainable results.

The Muscle-Fat Connection

Muscle isn't just about looking good—it's a calorie-burning powerhouse. Each pound of muscle burns approximately 4 to 7 calories per day, even at rest. By contrast, a pound of fat burns only about 2 calories per day. The more muscle mass you have, the higher your basal metabolic rate (BMR), meaning your body burns more calories throughout the day—even while you're sleeping.

This makes muscle mass your built-in calorie burner, helping you create a calorie deficit without extreme dieting or endless cardio.

Why Aerobic Exercise Isn’t Enough

While aerobic exercise burns calories during your workout, its effects don't last long. Resistance training, on the other hand, builds muscle, which continues to burn calories 24/7. Think of your muscle mass as a long-term investment—like compound interest for your metabolism. The more muscle you build, the more your body works for you, even during rest.

Real-World Examples

Consider two 200-pound men:

1. Man A: 8% body fat (lean and muscular)
2. Man B: 30% body fat (obese)

Man A burns approximately 2,179 calories per day at rest, while Man B burns just 1,743 calories. That’s a difference of 436 calories daily—without any additional effort. Over a week, that adds up to over 3,000 extra calories burned simply by having more muscle mass.

How to Build Muscle for Fat Loss

To gain muscle and optimize fat loss, focus on these three key principles:

1. Time Under Tension (TUT): Slow, controlled movements increase the time your muscles are under strain, promoting growth.
2. Volume: Incorporate higher reps and sets to increase workload and stimulate muscle hypertrophy.
3. Dynamic Effort: Add explosive movements like plyometrics or sprints to activate fast-twitch muscle fibers, which have a higher growth potential.

These principles can be applied to bodyweight exercises, kettlebell training, or barbell lifts. The goal is to challenge your muscles consistently and progressively.

The Big Picture: Fat Loss Made Easier

When you prioritize building muscle, creating a caloric deficit becomes much easier. Your muscles are constantly working to burn calories, even when you're not actively training. This means you can achieve fat loss without extreme calorie restriction or hours of cardio. Plus, strength training enhances insulin sensitivity, helping your body process glucose more effectively—a critical factor for long-term fat loss.

Start Investing in Muscle

If you’re serious about fat loss, shift your focus to gaining muscle. Muscle mass is your metabolic secret weapon, making it easier to burn calories, lose fat, and maintain your progress over time. Start incorporating resistance training into your routine and watch how your body transforms—not just in appearance but in how efficiently it burns energy.

Remember: fat loss isn't just about calories burned during a workout. It’s about building a body that burns more calories all day, every day.

Remember, if you don’t kill comfort, comfort will kill you.

 Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week

Podcast Transcript

Jerred: Let's talk about how, if you want to lose fat or lose weight, your number one goal should be gaining muscle mass. This is the garage gym athlete podcast. I'm Jerred Moon. And I feel like a lot of people don't fully understand this concept. So I want to briefly dive into it. But when people go to lose weight, they typically. Go down this aerobic path.

I don't know why maybe because it's hard and it burns a lot of calories, but that's where most people want to go. They want to like, okay, I guess I don't know what to do. I'll start running. In reality, that's not the best situation. And you can't really think about it as just a calories burned standpoint from how many calories do I burn in this workout? How you want to start looking at it from a conceptual basis? It's how can I. Put something in my body, on my body.

However you want to put it. That is going to burn calories for me while I sleep. That's what you need to be thinking of. That's the conceptual level. It's like, okay. To lose weight, to lose body fat, I need to be burning a significant amount of calories. Right. And how do I do that? The best way to burn calories is muscle mass. Plain and simple. If you can understand that concept, it will make you want to gain the most muscle that you possibly can, that your frame will allow that you can do naturally. And it's because on average, each pound of muscle. Burn's about four to seven calories per day, just to maintain itself. And now this, you know, obviously disclaimers these numbers can vary, whatever. But four to seven calories per day, but by contrast each pound of fat burns only about two calories per day.

Okay. So two. To four is double two to seven is more than triple muscle mass just to maintain itself burns a significant amount of calories. And so what it's going to do is it's going to increase your BMR, your basal metabolic rate. So more muscle mass means. Your body burns more calories at rest. The higher BMR, any higher BMR can contribute to a calorie deficit without needing to restrict food intake aggressively.

It's also going to enhance your insulin sensitivity. Because increase muscle mass helps improve how your body processes, the, and uses glucose, which can contribute to fat loss over time. I'm a huge believer in that fact. Now I just truly believe. Glucose insulin is something that you need to focus on, but here's another way to think about it. We got to the conceptual, like, okay, I want something in my body to like burn muscle mass or you to burn calories even while I'm sleeping.

If you want to think about this in other way, if we had two people, we had person one person, two we're saving money person, one saves a thousand dollars a month person to save a thousand dollars a month. And person two is just putting it in a savings account. And so if something comes up or whatever, they have to dip into their savings, it just depletes.

Cause it's basically nothing happening. Like month one, you have 1,002, you have 2000. The other person, person one is like, you know what, I'm going to put this thousand dollars. And an investment. Let's say it's an investment that earns 10%. Well, now they're getting compound interest, right? And so if we do that, if we play that out over 10 years, Person one is going to be so much further along than person two, that it's not even funny. So much, so that person one could take several months off. While person to even doubles the amount they save and then they still will come nowhere close to catching up and then person one can pick it back up. Keep investing instill. Just absolutely crushed person too.

So I'm not trying to get too far into financial analogy, but person one who's investing the money is the person with muscle mass. You can. Keep gaining muscle mass muscle mass muscle mass. And then you can take a break. You could like work out a little bit less. You could go into maintenance mode, you could do all these things and you still have all this muscle mass that sitting around and just burning four to seven calories per day, per pound of muscle, just to maintain itself. While the other person is not as, as much focused on that. And, you know, maybe they're doing endurance training or maybe they're just gaining fat mass. And it's not really doing anything for them.

They're burning some calories, but it's not the same as having this investment, this true nest egg, that's just starting to build and build on itself. So that's another way that you can can think about it. But to get down into the actual numbers of looking at this. So if we had. You know, ultimately a 200 pound male. And let's say it was a 200 pound male at 8% body fat.

And then we also had a 200 pound male that was at 30% body fat, which is obese. Well, if we just get into the basal metabolic rate, the BMR calculations. The person with 30% body fat just to exist, right? This is just calories burned at rest. That's what BMR is just to be alive. And really it's like, if you were to just lay, like wake up in the morning and not move. Like, that's what that's truly what BMR is.

So I'm not factoring in any kind of exercise, getting your steps in anything like that. This is just BMR. So you're how many calories I've burned or breasts? The 200 pound male with 30% body fat is going to burn about 1,700 calories per day. 1700 just to exist.

And more specifically if you've got it in the actual calculations, it's 1,743. Now the 200 pound male at 8% body fat, which is a good body. Pretty hard to achieve, but that's a great body fat percentage. This guy's going to burn 2,179 calories per day. So the difference in calorie burn. From person when a person two is 436 calories per day. Do you see why it's so much easier for someone who has muscle mass? Two. Maintain their fitness.

This is not true of endurance athletes by the way. Endurance athletes who strength. Train. Yeah. But if you're just purely endurance, this isn't necessarily the same. You have some muscle mass, but not near as much. So you want to be lean. You want to have a lot of muscle mass, too. Okay, so you don't want to just be. 'cause.

I mean, there are people 4% body fat who are just skinny with not very much muscle mass, right? That's not necessarily what I'm talking about. You want to be a Lowy, lower body, fat percentage, but high muscle mass. And if you achieve that, you can burn 400 to 500 calories more per day, just existing, not to mention what you ended up doing in your exercise each and every single day, because. Strength training resistance, training burns a lot of calories.

It re really, and truly does, but that's not what people should be focusing on. If they're trying to lose fat. Or. You know, lose weight, lose body fat. They shouldn't be thinking like which, what form of exercise burns the most calories. Because I could strap kettlebells to your hands and your feet and put a weight vest on you and put you in a, you know, A four-foot deep pool.

And have you do jumping Jackson walk around, just make, make it as hard as I possibly can. I'm like, Hey look, I discovered. What's going to burn the most possible calories in a workout. That's not really what we should be optimizing for. It we should be optimizing for is how do I, how do I have something in or on my body that just sits around and burns calories at a higher rate than anything else.

And that is muscle mass. So that's why you should be focusing on it. That's the whole conceptual part about it. And you do this pretty. Quite simply, you don't have to do like power lifting, heavy weightlifting, just resistance training of any kind. So you can do hypertrophy. I've talked about on the podcast several times, how to focus on hypertrophy.

It's time under tension. You need to get volume in there and then you need to do some dynamic efforts. So if you could focus on those three things with whatever you're using, whether that's body weight, Whether that's a kettlebell, whether that's a barbell, if you can get a lot of time under tension, you can get a lot of volume and then you can also activate tight two muscle fibers by doing fast and explosive movements.

You can do those three things. You're going to be building muscle mass. And once you have built, you've built that muscle mass. You have this bank, that's just going to continually burn calories for you. And it's easy for someone who has a lot of muscle mass to go into a calorie deficit. Because if you have a lot of muscle mass and you just forget to eat, or you don't eat as much as you should. It doesn't matter, your muscles are sitting there, just burning calories.

So a caloric deficit, which is what you ultimately need to be in to lose fat and to lose body weight. It's just so much easier for someone who has muscle mass, because you're just going to go. You're going to slip into that caloric deficit just by the nature of how your body is formed. So that is what you should start optimizing for. And the reason behind it is not because we're going to burn more calories in this training session.

It's because we're going to burn more calories as a human being at rest. When we have more muscle mass. So that is how you can optimize for losing fat. By gaining muscle. Remember if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.