The Best Workout to Lose Weight & Gain Muscle

The fitness industry, like most buck-seeking businesses, is a good mix of truth and untruth, especially when it comes to weight loss. Gyms and health clubs are often packed with equipment, some useful and some not so useful, while newsstand fitness magazines tout the latest supplements to help gym-goers seek the ideal "beach body." Not to mention late-night infomercials plugging various gizmos designed for "fun and easy" exercise. With all the mixed info available, it shouldn't come as a surprise that so many people give up their weight-loss efforts.

Real Truth

The truth is, while any activity that promotes health and well-being is beneficial to the individual, losing excess body fat and gaining lean muscle mass is desired by many but often hard to figure out how to do. Genetics play an important part, as both bone structure and muscle fiber type (and abundance) dictate how exercising affects physique. The importance of proper nutrition cannot be understated, as diet is largely responsible for either weight gain or loss. All hope isn't lost, however, because regardless of body type, the trick to losing the excess body fat and gaining muscle is to apply the proper stressors while maintaining healthy eating habits.

Real Work

The best workout for losing weight and gaining lean muscle mass is one that taxes both the anaerobic (muscle) system and the aerobic (cardio) system, a double whammy that forces the body to fire on all cylinders, thus placing a higher physiological demand on the body. This type of workout requires the body to metabolize fat faster for energy use, and stresses out muscles to peak performance. Intensity is key, and high endurance, circuited functional workouts---popularized by programs like PX-90 and Crossfit---do just that. By focusing on overall fitness and not just losing a certain amount of poundage, these workouts blend cardio and weight-lifting elements into comprehensive and challenging work.

How It's Done

Although each of the aforementioned programs vary to some degree, both are based on circuit training, which means select exercises are done consecutively with little or no rest between sets. By focusing more on multi-joint compound exercises, caloric expenditure is greater, thus burning the fat and contributing to overall musculature. Traditional bodybuilding workouts often do not focus enough on overall fitness, instead relying on simple single-joint moves over the course of a week, a long path to weight loss and muscle gaining. A basic example has exercisers performing three exercises for a rep scheme of 21, 15, 9, 6, and 3. A person would perform the first exercise for 21 reps, then do the same for the remaining exercises. After the round of 21 reps is complete, the person would immediately begin the 15 rep round, working their way down to three reps, all completed without any rest in between.