Building muscle WAY overrated as fat loss solution

[Groundless]

Art Carey | The myth of muscle as calorie burner

The conventional wisdom: Muscle is metabolically active. It burns calories even when your body is at rest - 50 to 60 calories a day per pound of muscle. Ergo, if you add a pound of muscle, you can burn an additional 350 calories a week, 1,500 calories a month, 18,000 calories a year - the equivalent of 5 pounds of flesh.

In other words, if you gain a pound of muscle, everything else being equal, you can, in a year, shed 5 pounds of flab.

Trouble is, it ain't so.

[joelr]

But there's also the calories burned from the training required to build the muscle AND added muscle makes it more work for your body to move around.

So sitting around with muscles may not add up to much fat burning but you burn more calories in motion.
Try carrying around a 15lb weight, even shifting it around to different areas or put it in a backpack. Your legs begin to feel it, even a 2lb weight gets tiring.
Because when you gain muscle there is also some intra-muscular water weight gain as well. It adds up quickly to an extra 10 or 15 lbs.

I think that stuff makes a difference. Heck at 250 I used to get out of breath just walking.

[LostMyMap]

Originally Posted by joelr

Because when you gain muscle there is also some intra-muscular water weight gain as well.

What is that?

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by joelr

But there's also the calories burned from the training required to build the muscle

Not only that, there's the calories burned from maintaining that muscle.

For example, you work out for six weeks, and you gain 6 pounds of muscle. However, the 6 pounds of muscle don't remain as 6 pounds of muscle, unless you continue to exercise.

And the continual exercise burns fat.

[RomanHD]

Ditto for guys. After several years of training hard, a man may be able to gain 10 pounds of muscle, max. Even with steroids and other anabolic aids, the most a competitive bodybuilder can add is 30 to 40 pounds of muscle, Ellis says.

Ronnie Coleman was 287 lbs @ <5% BF in 2003. You want to tell me that he has added 30 to 40 pounds of muscle?

Also, as ALG said, you need to maintain your muscle mass, and that itself burns a lot of calories. Especially when you get into squatting and deadlifting several hundred pounds.

Lastly:

Because, besides making you stronger, fortifying your bones and joints, improving your balance, reducing the risk of heart disease, and giving you a sense of power, control, accomplishment and well-being, pumping iron will make you look better.

[votoshka]

I think the POINT though, is that muscle is not as metabolically active as people have been led to believe... yes, you burn calories building muscle, yes you burn calories maintaining muscle... but actually having the muscle won't burn many more calories than you would if you didn't have it.

AND if you lose fat as well as gain a bit of muscle, your overall BMR may still be lower than it was before you gained the muscle, so you can't rest on your laurels and continue to eat the same way you did before

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by votoshka

AND if you lose fat as well as gain a bit of muscle, your overall BMR may still be lower than it was before you gained the muscle

If you lose fat, that in itself is already success.

Remember? The objective is to lose fat.

It is not a success to keep fat so that you can have fat to metabolise fat.

[goldberg]

Originally Posted by Groundless

Art Carey | The myth of muscle as calorie burner

The conventional wisdom: Muscle is metabolically active. It burns calories even when your body is at rest - 50 to 60 calories a day per pound of muscle. Ergo, if you add a pound of muscle, you can burn an additional 350 calories a week, 1,500 calories a month, 18,000 calories a year - the equivalent of 5 pounds of flesh.

In other words, if you gain a pound of muscle, everything else being equal, you can, in a year, shed 5 pounds of flab.

Trouble is, it ain't so.

Muscle is heavier than fat so if you just replace it then you end up weighing more. Though you will look better, which is the result people are looking for after all.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by goldberg

Muscle is heavier than fat so if you just replace it then you end up weighing more.

Doesn't matter. Being heavy because you're muscular is not a health risk.
Being heavy because you're fat is a health risk.


This man is not at risk, although quite heavy.




This man is at risk, even though not as heavy.



See the difference?

[Groundless]

Originally Posted by votoshka

I think the POINT though, is that muscle is not as metabolically active as people have been led to believe... yes, you burn calories building muscle, yes you burn calories maintaining muscle... but actually having the muscle won't burn many more calories than you would if you didn't have it.

AND if you lose fat as well as gain a bit of muscle, your overall BMR may still be lower than it was before you gained the muscle, so you can't rest on your laurels and continue to eat the same way you did before

Exactly. Many treat it like a diet, that is, I will gain muscle for these 6 months then I can stop. It doesn't work that way. Whatever you do make sure it is something you can do every week. A lifestyle change is the most effective not going nuts for a few months or weeks.

[Groundless]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

If you lose fat, that in itself is already success.

Remember? The objective is to lose fat.

It is not a success to keep fat so that you can have fat to metabolise fat.

And the point is muscle building does not contribute significantly to fat loss. It can spare the muscles when reducing calories on a fat reduction program though, but, that wasn't salient to this thread.

When people reduce calories to lose fat the ones who retain the most lean body mass are those who cut the calories and did weight lifting. This is a good thing to help prevent yo-yo dieting and coming out of the diet/fat gain cycle worse off than when you started.

[DanFromSeoul]

I'd say that eating is more important than exercising when it comes to losing weight and staying in shape.

I recommend checking out this documentary here. I really found the power of dairy products interesting.

Fact of the matter is, being and staying in shape requires a reasonable goal, a strategy, a plan with a timeline (I usually do 90 day plans for my health) and most important: Execution and finishing the plan.

Dan

[Acting Like Godot]

Where did all this "either/or" thinking come from?

You want to be healthy? So go do some exercise AND eat a nutritious diet. No one said that you can only pick one.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by DanFromSeoul

Fact of the matter is, being and staying in shape requires a reasonable goal, a strategy, a plan with a timeline (I usually do 90 day plans for my health) and most important: Execution and finishing the plan.

Sounds like dieting.

[Lifeisamazing]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

Where did all this "either/or" thinking come from?

You want to be healthy? So go do some exercise AND eat a nutritious diet. No one said that you can only pick one.

Yes. No need for X is more important.

All in all, cardio+weight training+good nutrition+good sleep+stress free life=good physique.

[joelr]

Originally Posted by LostMyMap

What is that?

It's how creatine causes "good" water retention. The bad way to hold water is under the skin, that looks like fat. But creatine is stored in muscles and forces more water to be held inside the muscles, which does not look like fat but looks like you have bigger muscles.

Any muscle growth means more nutrients will be transported to muscles and more water is held inside them (known as intra-muscular water).
It's a really large part of being a musclehead actually. A lot of it is just water.

A bodybuilder friend of mine, T. Vig, once got a stomach bug and couldn't eat or drink more than a little bit of water for a while. After a week he lost so much water he looked like a different person. He lost 20 something lbs. He already had good abs so it wasn't so much that he lost skin water and fat or muscle (not in 1 week). He went from huge pro bodybuilder to average weight lifter guy then back again once he hydrated up.

T. Vig's Nutrition Unlimited 141 West Boylston Street 508-853-TVIG (8844) - Home