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Lean Muscle Mass
Lean muscle mass refers to the amount of muscle on your body without excess body fat. It's the muscles that are visible when body fat is minimized.
Some key points about lean muscle mass:
- It's made up of things like protein, water, glycogen, and minerals. The protein provides strength and structure to the muscle.
- Building lean muscle mass involves strength training to stimulate muscle growth, along with proper nutrition to feed the growth.
- Lean muscle helps burn calories because muscle is metabolically active tissue. The more you have, the more energy your body burns just functioning and repairing muscle.
- Women generally have a lower potential for lean mass than men for hormonal reasons. But weight and resistance training can still substantially increase lean mass in women.
How to Build Lean Muscle
Here's a quick rundown of how to maximize lean muscle growth:
- Lift weights. Challenging your muscles with resistance/strength training provides the stimulus they need to adapt and grow larger over time.
- Eat enough protein. Getting plenty of high-quality protein helps supply amino acids to repair exercise-induced muscle damage and facilitate increases in muscle size. Shoot for 0.5-1 gram per pound of body weight daily.
- Have a slight calorie surplus. Consuming slightly more calories than you burn fuels muscle growth without leading to excessive fat gain. Aim for 300-500 calories over maintenance.
- Get enough rest and recovery. Muscles grow and strengthen when resting, not just when working out. Make sure you sleep at least 7-9 hours per night.
So in short, the combination of strategic weight training, proper protein intake, optimized nutrition, and adequate rest allows you to gain lean body mass, which has metabolic, strength, aesthetic, and longevity benefits.