How many calories does a pound of muscle burn?
I just realized after writing that last post that we have pretty much debunked the idea that a pound of muscle burns 50 calories a day.
Realistically, if we include the metabolic cost of keeping the muscle alive, AND the cost of moving that extra weight around, we see that a pound of muscle really helps you burn an optimistic 5 extra calories per day.
Now the point of this post isn’t to downplay the importance of resistance training or even building muscle. As there is an entirely different way to look at this phenomena.
While adding 10 pounds of muscle only increases your daily calorie burning by about 50 Calories (again, just an estimate) it will do wonders for the way your body looks. So there is still a benefit to adding muscle.
And while I like the idea of adding muscle, I think the difference becomes really significant when we start talking about LOSING muscle.
As we age we become less active. This isn’t unavoidable, but seems to be a relatively excepted fact.
If we are less active and using our muscles less, they will shrink (use it or lose it applies to just about everything within your body, from intelligence to muscle mass)
If you had 155 pounds of LBM while you were in your thirties, but have 130 pounds of LBM in your sixties, that missing 25 pounds can create quite the difference.
Just by HAVING less muscle you would be using 125 less calories per day, not to mention the fact that you are less active (the reason you lost the muscle in the first place).
So bottom line – Weight training and building/maintaining muscle are NOT the metabolism boosting miracle they have been made out to be, but they are still a VITAL part of your weight loss plan.
Eat less and maybe eat less often. Lift more and move more often. This is a pretty effective recipe for weight loss success.
BP
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The reason some people quote such high numbers is because people who start weight training will often see their metabolic rates go up 8% or more. So if someone’s TDEE went up 100 calories per day and they’d added 3 pounds LBM, the simple assumption is that each pound of muscle adds 30 cals/day.
Here’s a really good article on this: http://www.ymcatwincities.org/assets/pdfs/aboutymcapdfs/why_the_confusion.pdf
@Viking Dan
@Viking Dan
Hi Dan,
I think you’ve slightly missed the point of that specific research.
(acutally I don’t think you missed it as much as your reference missed it)
The Muscle itself does add some metabolic cost. The rest of the increase came from elderly (65ish) sedentary people returning to a trained state after a 12-16 week period of heavy resistance training.
The additional muscle helped for sure, but the largest part of the effect seems to be attributed to the actual increase in activity level.
As the authors of the 1994 paper stated “The change in RMR with resistance training was not significantly correlated with changes in body composition.”
There are absolutely benefits to resistance training, and to activity in general, but these benefits have seemingly been mistakenly attributed to the increase in muscle mass alone.
B
Brad,
I’m glad to see your post because I have been combing the research papers to come up with diffinitve info about the muscle and metabolism to get the info straight for my students and clients.
If possible, can you share some links to papers and some research regarding that I can read and refer to myself? I’m still compiling my report and am looking for all the quality resources I can find.
Excellent topic – we seem to be on the same wave length lately!
Lani
Off topic, but i wanted to paste you a link to this: Fasting may improve cancer chemotherapy.
Hi Brad, I have an off-topic question for you. I’ve been using Eat Stop Eat for the past three weeks, and have successfully added 2 fasts each week. I’ve already noticed all my clothes are looser – I’m so pleased! However I noticed on fasting days that I feel noticeably colder – my hands and feet especially, which is VERY unusual for me, cause I’m usually complaining that I’m too hot. I’ve also noticed that I feel pretty dopey in the afternoons (I’ve been fasting 6pm-6pm) and I’m not as quick; sometimes I feel lightheaded too. I fast on working days, cause I like to keep busy, but my job is fairly sedentary. It’s mentally quite demanding, though – I have tons of meetings and very busy days, but they usually involve sitting at a computer or meeting table. To me, this all adds up to lower blood pressure during fasting, but I could be wrong – do you know if that’s typical? Do you think trying to squeeze in more activity would be helpful? Usually on my fasting days I don’t even take lunch – just work through. But I wonder if walking at lunch would help with the coldness, dizziness, etc.? Any advice you have is much appreciated!!