Quick ‘notes style’ post today as I need to get away from this computer and get some shopping done:
MUSCLE and your METABOLISM.
1 pound of muscle burns about 5 Calories in a 24 hour period at rest.
Not 50.
Not even 10-12 like commonly stated.
So why the confusion?
Well, if we look at the Katch-McCardle Formula (used for calculating a persons metabolic rate) we see that:
Our daily metabolic rate can be calculated as “Calories burned in a 24 hour period = 370 + (21.6 X LBM(kg))”
Which leads many of people to think that a kilogram of Muscle burns 21.6 Calories in a 24 hour period.
So a pound must burn about 10 Calories right? (21.6 divided by 2.2)
Well not so fast…
As I’ve been saying for a long time now, a pound of Lean Body Mass does NOT mean a pound of muscle.
It includes everything else in your body that is NOT FAT.
Which means this calculation includes other HIGHLY metabolic tissues like your liver, heart and viscera.
But when you are adding Lean Mass from resistance training you are not adding mass to your liver etc, only muscle mass.
And even though you have lots of muscle compared to organs they only share about 50% of the metabolic work.
Meaning, for every pound of muscle you gain through working out, you can expect about an extra 5 calories being burned at rest over 24 hours.
Bottom line – Use your diet to burn fat, because adding muscle to boost your metabolism may not work quite as well as you were told/hoping it would.
BP
