What does building muscle mass mean?

If you exercise with weights, you may not lose body weight. You will be more likely to gain weight. Muscle is heavier than fat by volume. As you build muscle, you can lose inches, but not weight, because muscle volume is heavier than fat.

Strength training exercise (lifting weights) is not designed to help people lose weight. That is not the purpose of the training. The idea is to make your muscles bigger and stronger, and you will often gain weight in the process.

Cardiovascular exercises such as aerobics, running, walking, and cycling are the exercises needed by those who want to LOSE weight. These are exercises that use a lot of energy (burn a lot of calories) in a short period of time. Cardiovascular or aerobic exercises are designed to build endurance rather than strength. Aerobic exercise will give you the stamina you need to run uphill for a long time. Weight training will give you the strength to lift the hill, so to speak.

Building muscle mass means forcing the body to increase the size and strength of its muscles. The body doesn’t just build muscle because it has nothing better to do. You can’t eat the “right” foods or take the “right” supplements and build muscle in your body. Those things can give your body the tools it needs to build muscle, but they won’t make the body use them. The ONLY way to make muscles enlarge is to damage the muscle by lifting weights and letting the body repair the damage by building more muscle tissue.

The way to inflict muscle damage is by repeatedly lifting weights to the point where the muscle fails. When the muscle fails, that means enough damage has been dealt. The next step is to rest while the body repairs the damage (builds muscle tissue). Then you again deal damage by lifting heavier weights and doing more reps to start the process over.