Maintaining Muscle Mass to Lose Belly Fat

Often as we age, we find ourselves gaining weight even though we haven’t really changed our eating habits in years. This is because our bodies tend to produce and maintain less muscle as we get older, instead of building muscle the way it used to, more of our food is stored away as fat.

Compounding the situation is the fact that muscle burns calories and increases our metabolism, while fat has the opposite effect. This makes more of the food we take in available to be stored instead of being burned for energy.

Fortunately, we can counter this effect and lose the extra belly fat we may have picked up over the years. A regular program of resistance training or lifting weights can help rebuild and maintain muscle. This doesn’t have to mean going to the gym and trying to see how much you can bench press.

It can mean something as simple as adding sit-ups and push-ups to the beginning and end of your aerobic workout, or before and after you go for a daily walk. Using your own body weight for resistance with these common exercises is all you need to keep the muscle on and keep the belly fat off.

Your goal each day should be to do as many sit-ups and push-ups as you can at each session. The most effective muscle-building exercise occurs when muscles are being pushed to their limits on a regular basis.