Why all the deception? Simply put, you cannot sell old fashioned hard work; however, you can sell ordinary food products for incredible profits if you claim they will help your excess body fat disappear. Are overpriced comestibles really the way to lose weight? As wonderful as this may sound, this is a partial truth at best. Any woman can lose weight by decreasing her caloric intake; however, to maintain her weight she must carefully maintain her level of caloric intake or else gain more weight than when she started.

So why do women rebound after a seemingly successful diet? Simply put, the human body was not designed to run on a caloric deficit, humans are supposed to eat when they are hungry. When a woman stops herself from eating the amount of calories she needs, her body ultimately suffers.

The human body is designed to be as efficient as possible, and whenever we refuse to eat a sufficient amount of calories, our bodies make an adjustment to survive with less food. The primary method our bodies use to stabilize themselves when running on a caloric deficit is reducing the amount of muscle present in our bodies. Try and think of muscle as the fat furnaces our bodies use to burn up calories. The bigger the furnace, the more calories are consumed when the furnaces are used. Going on long diets causes the body to reduce the muscle mass in the body, as a precaution to stave off starvation.

Because of this the best way to lose weight is to bulk up a little and then begin attacking fat through cardiovascular activity, not starvation. The bigger guns you have, so to speak, the bigger damage will be done to body fat when they are used. Therefore, gaining the muscle should come before trying to loose the fat. You will be hard pressed to find any woman who wants to look masculine, but toned muscles are much more attractive than flabby skin. Hitting the weights won't make you into an ogre; rather, it will give you that athletic body you've always dreamed about having.

Armed with this logic, it becomes clear how dieting products and plans can keep women hooked to them. By hiding the truth about muscle, women are left with dieting as the only escape from excess body fat. In fact, after going on a diet without exercising, you'll be more enslaved to dieting than before. This is due to the reduction in muscles mass and metabolism which occurs while on a prolonged diet. The end result is women without muscle mass are left with no option but to keep pumping dollars into diet pills and programs to keep their current weight steady. This is the logic many dieting companies employ to keep women buying their overpriced food that promises the buyer a better body. This is certainly a deceptive marketing strategy women must not be deceived by.

There is not an easy way to build muscle mass, but knowing a little about how muscles function can help women build muscle as quickly as possible.

Building muscle is done through strength training, i.e. using a high level of resistance and a low level of repetition. You'll need to use enough resistance to complete only 3 to 5 repetitions. You'll want to weight for approximately three minutes before doing another set of 3 to 5 repetitions. You'll want to complete at least 3 to 5 sets in this manner. Often, it is helpful to work another muscle group while during your three minute rest to use your time at the gym most effectively. For example, you could work your triceps and your hamstrings at the same time. While you rest your triceps you can work your hamstrings. Sitting around for three minutes between sets can be incredibly time consuming!

Working out using such a high level of resistance will ensure a maximum amount of muscle tissue is ripped during your workout. Once your muscle tissue is ripped, the body begins the catabolic process of breaking down the damaged muscle fibers. Next, the anabolic process begins and the body starts to build more muscle to compensate for the increased amount of stress placed upon the damaged muscle. For this reason, using lower repetitions will not adequately stress the muscles within the body to engage the catabolic-and subsequent anabolic-processes necessary to gain muscle mass. Despite what many health gurus may tell you, simple science says strength training is the quickest path to gaining muscle available to the human body!

Once the muscle is built, you can begin to develop it further through using more repetitions and focusing primarily on cardiovascular activity. Your muscles will need to be maintained by lifting, but you won't want to keep increasing the weight. When you reach a desired level of muscularity you can stop adding weight and simply start adding repetitions. Doing more than 15 repetitions for each set is unnecessary, we are only interested in maintaining our muscle, not engaging in any kind of cardiovascular activity.

So where does eating come into play? Well, simply put, without eating a woman cannot build muscle! Protein is a vital component to the building of muscle in your body. Without a proper level of protein, a woman's body will not bulk up at all, but simply repair damaged muscle.

Whenever our bodies ingest a food containing protein, such as tuna, eggs, or milk, the nitrogen levels in the blood increases and tell our muscles it is acceptable to use the excess protein to build more muscle tissue. Muscle tissue is not as essential as other components in the body and is only synthesized in the event of an abundance of raw building materials, i.e. proteins. Without eating proteins you cannot expect to gain very much muscle.

Body builders typically consume over 120 grams of protein a day to meet their protein requirements. To figure out how much protein you will need simply take your body weight in kilograms and multiply it by .7 or .8 and you will arrive at the number of grams of protein you need every day. The quality of protein is defined by how readily the body can absorb the protein. The best source of protein is whey concentrate or isolate. The second best sources can be found in chicken and legumes like lentils and split peas. Women and men alike should not eat more than 30 grams of proteins at any one sitting; our bodies can only absorb 30 grams of protein at a time. Make sure you eat 15% more calories when gaining muscle and 15% less calories when losing fat. You cannot do both at the same time very effectively, it is wise to concentrate on either one or the other for the best, and quickest results.

Tom Venuto's Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle website.