One of the most common request personal trainers receive is the desire to tone up the body.
“I Just Want To Tone. I don’t want to build muscle, I just want to tighten up.”
If your goal is to get leaner it is essential that you increase lean body mass (muscle) or at the very least maintain the muscle that you have. Muscle burns energy (food and body fat) and creates the shape and “tone” of a lean physique. The more muscle you have on your body the leaner you can get and the easier it is to stay there.
In order to “tone”, two things must happen. You need to increase muscle activity and mass and loose body fat. .
For example:
- If you gain 5 lbs. of muscle and loose 10 lbs. of fat your total weight loss may be only 5lbs. but your volume (overall body size) will have decreased noticeably and your shape will have improved also.
- On the other hand if you lose 5lbs. muscle and 5.bs of body fat (as can occur in low calorie diets and cardio only exercise routines) for a total of 10 lbs. you may have lost more weight than in the above example but loss of volume will be no greater and your shape will not have improved. Body fat percentage didn’t changed and with less muscle to burn energy it will become harder to loose more weight and your body will be prone to gain body fat faster.
So Toning should be looked upon as improving shape and decreasing overall body size through improving muscle function and increasing muscle mass while decreasing body fat.