When people want a healthier body with less fat, I advise them to build muscle and burn fat.

College kids who want to get more muscle do something called “bulk and cut,” which involves eating lots of calories and working out with weights to add both fat and muscle.

Then, they cut the calories, increase their workouts, and work a different group of muscles every day with heavy weights.

Since I don’t have their metabolism or the time to get to the gym every day, I would be more likely to just add weight. Personally, I need a more structured approach I can do a couple times a week, and sadly I can’t eat everything that isn’t nailed down and not gain weight like I could when I was younger.

As some of our most metabolically-active tissue, muscle is very important. When you build muscle, you increase your BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate, the amount of calories you burn every minute when you are at rest.

The higher your BMR, the more calories you burn all day long.

Another great thing about muscle is that it gets sugar out of the blood stream by a mechanism that is not dependent on insulin.

This makes your insulin more available and tends to keep your blood sugar in lower healthier ranges since you are not depending on the insulin alone to get sugar into cells where it is burned for fuel. 

As we age we tend to lose muscle mass and strength. One way to help offset this is to get more protein in your diet. Another is to take supplements designed to signal the body to make more muscle.