New workout and diet plans are a dime a dozen, and when you have two goals – to lose weight and gain muscle mass – there can be some confusion as to what is a legit method. Infomercial equipment is always sketchy at best, but on the bright side you don’t have to devote every free hour you have in the gym either to get results.

The best way to lose weight and gain muscle at the same time is to focus on your entire body, which is what interval training actually does. Instead of trying to run for hours a week and notice only a change in your legs, you should focus on training all of the different muscle groups in order to lose weight evenly throughout your entire body.

The way that interval training works is to gradually build the difficulty of workouts instead of jumping right into an intense exercise regimen. Using this system you can choose from among exercises which will target the major muscle groups or mix it up and target many different muscle groups simultaneously. This variation leads to much better results than doing the same workouts all the time.

Unlike some other types of exercising, with interval training your muscles can recover fairly quickly from the workout. Instead of being sore for a week, and unable to workout to boot, you should be refreshed and ready to go in no time.

Interval training is unlike any other exercise program, since it is actually fun to perform. Instead of getting bored by running on a treadmill for an hour or doing the same exercise video over and over, you can try different exercises every day of the week. As long as exercises targeting the same muscle groups are performed, desirable results can be easily achieved.

You’ve heard all about the importance of metabolism, and probably lament that friend we all have that has the amazingly speedy, natural metabolism. Well it’s time to catch up to that friend and interval training can help. Interval training speeds up your metabolism a great deal. One of the ways it does this is by activating many different muscle groups at the same time, signaling your body that it needs to burn more calories to recover, build muscle and keep up with the workout.

With interval training you also get many of the benefits that you would with a classic cardiovascular workout. The benefit is you can do it in a fraction of the time and with much more variation. Due to the nature of interval training your breathing rate and heart rate increase greatly, giving both a solid workout and improving your resting rates with both.

This system isn’t some fad workout plan or a scam aimed at the wallets of those trying to lose weight – it is a method which is proven to work to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. You can build lean muscle mass while burning fat by doing low impact workouts which work on various muscle groups. You won’t be exhausted and sore afterward – and you’ll get better results than any “cardio” workout can offer you.