Fat and muscles are two different kinds of body tissue. So the major issue is whether or not you can convert muscles into fat or fat into muscle. This can help to determine what is strong fat. For example, overweight people seem to be stronger than skinny people. It might be surprising since there’s a difference between muscle and fat.
The big question is really about what makes people strong. We often have the idea that building muscle mass is required for people to become stronger. However, it might be more complicated than that. For example, overweight people often seem to be stronger than skinny people. It’s important to know why this is true and exactly why more body fat seems to make people stronger than less body fat. It might seem to be due to body weight and similar issues. Knowing the facts can help to sort things out so, it’s clearer about what fat strength is all about.
What Defines Physical Strength?
It helps to explain what makes people strong, whether it’s through muscles or fat. There are different ways to test a person’s total strength. The maximum weight you can lift once is One Rep Max (1RM).
There are other methods to measure a person’s strength. They include lifting to failure. It is a different method of measuring strength since it’s generally about lower weight and high reps instead of high weight and super-low reps (1).
There are different ways to measure strength besides general types of weight training. They include strength, power, and endurance. Strength is mostly related to issues like lean muscle mass. When you build muscle, this boosts your overall strength. Muscle and strength are often closely connected. When building muscle mass, it usually involves building strength.
Then there’s endurance. It is related to stamina and is more closely linked to the heart/lungs than muscle mass. If you boost your stamina, then you can do more reps/sets and complete longer workouts. This is another sign of physical fitness.
Then there’s power. This is the main one related to fat/muscle. Ideally, it’s healthier to build muscle and burn fat. However, more fat means you have more bodyweight. This can affect factors like lifting heavy and 1RM. It’s related to more body fat equaling more force, and thus more power.
This doesn’t mean that putting fat is the healthiest way to boost strength. It’s a lot better to build lean muscle mass instead. Being overweight/obese can cause lots of health issues related to heart health and a world of other issues.
Meanwhile, if you build lean muscle mass this boosts your body’s ability to burn fat. That, in turn, can help you get into shape better.
When we think of strength we often focus on muscle tissues. There’s no question that muscles are closely linked to your overall health. Building lean muscle mass can increase factors like strength, and endurance.
However, boosting muscle isn’t the only way to increase strength. You can also achieve the same goal by being fat vs. skinny. This is mostly about the amount of force your body can produce when doing exercises like bench press, dumbbell curls, and shoulder press.
One issue to take up is that you can’t turn fat into muscle. This is a common belief but they’re two different kinds of human tissue. If you want to boost your overall strength then try to increase muscle and reduce fat. This is an even better option than increasing body fat.
Boosting strength through more body fat can also cause other health issues. They include ones related to cholesterol, blood pressure, liver, etc. While more fat can make you stronger it can also make you unhealthier. That’s a situation you’ll want to avoid.
A better overall approach in terms of good health is to build lean muscle mass. There are different methods you can use including weightlifting, bodyweight exercises, and high-intensity interval training (HIIT) that combines cardio and strength training.
Besides muscle, your body mass index (BMI) is also a factor. This is closely related to body fat and thus overall strength. It’s not practical for many people to train enough to achieve a bodybuilder’s physique. So, in this case, it’s practical to have a higher percentage of body fat.
The key is to make sure your BMI isn’t overly high based on your height, age, gender, and so on. If you do that then a somewhat high BMI versus a bodybuilder can help produce strong fat.
Top Tips to Burn Fat Faster
METABOLISM-BOOSTING FOOD/DRINK
This can include options like coffee/tea, raw cacao (chocolate), and chili peppers. These and other foods/drinks can increase metabolism.
Besides adding them to your everyday meals/snacks you can also use them for pre-workout meals/drinks. For example, studies show that drinking a cup of black coffee one hour before workouts can help to burn more calories and thus fat. Fun Fact: one pound of body fat is equal to 3,500 calories.
DRINK MORE WATER
This is something everyone should be doing more of in general. Forget about the old-school “8 glasses a day.’ That only works out to about 2 liters. For best results bump up your daily intake to 3L, which is about 12 glasses.
Drinking water can provide several fat-burning benefits. Besides flushing out the fat it can also help to remove wastes/toxins that can also affect your health and slow down your ability to build lean muscle mass.
EAT MORE FIBER
Studies show that 95% of Americans don’t consume enough fiber. This is also a health issue in many other countries due to modern food being highly-processed and high in stuff like salt, sugar, fat, etc. It’s important to remove this stuff from your body and more fiber can help. It helps to keep the juices flowing. While the body doesn’t digest dietary fiber it can still help you reduce body fat.
HIIT WORKOUTS
High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is different from standard high-intensity workouts. The reason is you do short high-intensity exercises then keep moving between sets. So your rest period involves low-intensity exercises like walking. The key is to keep your heart rate up to turn your body into a fat-burning machine. This can help to build muscle and boost strength even better than strong fat.