Why is muscle necessary when losing weight

I recently got an email from a reader that liked my ideas on "mastering bodyweight", but wasn't sure that strength training was necessary.
He said:
"I like the idea of being able to master my bodyweight, but wouldn't just losing weight (especially fat) and getting your bodyweight as low as possible be the easiest way to do this? Couldn't I do this with just cardio conditioning?"
You could lose a lot of weight by just adjusting diet and doing cardiovascular activity (be it of the Long Slow Distance, High Itensity Interval Training, Medium Fast Distance, or Density Conditioning variety. But you still wouldn't have any muscle.
I don't want to use the whole "sprinter vs. distance runner" story here, because it's been done a bunch of times already. But look at most long distance runners - most have little muscle tone, aren't strong, and are "skinny fat" (i.e. - their skinny and weigh little, but many still have guts).
Why would you not want to be strong? Powerful? Explosive? For the most part, just plain cardiovascular activity won't get you that way...especially not over you entire body. Now, you could do Density Conditioning running hills, and that would get your legs in shape, and bodweight circuits could get your upper body in shape, but that wouldn't really be just cardiovascular activity anymore.
Need another reason? When losing weight, building muscle is actually one of the BEST things you can do. Why? Because muscle burns more calories at rest to simply maintain than fat does.
How many more? One pound of fat burns roughly 3-5 calories per day to maintain. One pound of muscle needs roughly 50 calories per day. So, if you could simply replace 10 lbs. of fat with 10 lbs. of lean muscle, you'd burn up roughly an extra 500 calories per day - with no other changes to your bodyweight, schedule, workout programs, or anything else.
If you replaced 10 lbs. of fat with 10 lbs. of muscle and went on to burn that extra 500 calories per day, you'd continue to lose roughly 1 pound of fatper week, with NO other change. (500 calories/day x 7 days/week = 3500 calories = 1 pound of fat)
Why would you not want to do this?
Train Hard, Rest Hard, Play Hard.
Matt "Wiggy" Wiggins is a strength coach and author living in Cameron, N.C. Having trained and designed Workout Plans for 16+ years, Wiggy is a strength moderator at mma.tv, columnist for MMAWeekly.com, AtlanticMMA.com, and MMATraining.com. He has just released his new MMA Workout Program, the "Working Class MMA Workout Program" and its accompanying "Championship Edition". See more about Wiggy at http://www.workingclassfitness.com
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