how many calories in a pound of muscle?

[Creatureofnight]

So your basically stating you need to more of a cal deficit for fat loss, than you would need a cal increase for gain?

Since fat is more calories than muscle?


I used to always believe it was pretty much universal for both. Meaning, if you wanted to lose fat or gain muscle, you would pretty much increase/decrease cals the same.

 

[MS]

To gain muscle or lose fat might require similar changes in calorie intake, in other words you need to burn 3500 cals of fat to lose a pound of fat, or eat an extra 2500+ cals to gain a pound of muscle...BUT you only need to burn 400-500 cals of muscle to lose a pound of muscle. This is what makes bodybuilding so interesting. It is much harder to gain muscle than fat, AND it is much easier to lose muscle than fat if you don't know what you're doing. Fat gain is the default when calories are in excess to requirement and no weight training is performed. Muscle loss is the default when calories are restricted and no weight training is performed, especially if protein intake is low. Intense weight training and adequate protein are needed in either case.

 

[Creatureofnight]

Thanks for clearing that up MS, i always like hearing everyones thoughts and ideas and some of you insights just taught me a few things.

I never knew it only took a loss of 500 cals from pro to lose a lb. of muscle. Im guessing this would be thecase when cals are restrcited and protein intake isnt adequate.

 

[Anatomywiz]

I'd love to see some hard info-studies etc on this. To further confuse or enlighten this topic, in order to send the signal to your muscles to grow, you need to work them hard right(I mean can't walk for four days after sqatting 405 15 times sore)? Has anyone here ever seen a picture of a muscle biopsy after a person has done high intensity exercise? It looks like you took a hammer to it. So not only do you need a little protein to build the new muscle tissue, you also need a lot to re-build all the old. Not counting the calories burned during the exercise itself, I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't take at least 2,500 extra calories of protein to build that new tissue. That's why I'm going broke right now getting in 275-300 grams of protein per day. When your not taking anabolics people can and do take in huge amounts of protein, but they simply don't have the testosterone levels to use it all. The rest is used to convert into fat stores, or if they are catabolic(dieting) into carb stores. What do you guys think?

 

[MS]

A lot of that muscle damaged protein will get recycled, so you don't need grossly large amounts of protein to repair them. But you do need energy both to train them hard, as well as for recovery processes. This energy can come from carbs or to a limited extent from fat. Protein is an expensive and inefficient way to fuel intense workouts and recovery since up to 25% of the energy in protein is lost when it has to undergo gluconeogenesis to provide glucose.

Whatever dietary approach you choose to gain muscle, I have yet to see any evidence (personally or scientifically) that more than 1.8g of protein PER KILO will result in any better muscle gains. I think a lot of bodybuilders started eating more than this because a lot of people rounded 1.8 up to 2g, and got pounds confused with kilos!!!

 

[HollywoodF1]

Ummmm NO. I don't know where those folks got 2500 cals per pound of skeletal muscle from, but it's wrong. Fully hydrated human skeletal muscle is no more than 20-25% protein, 4-8% fat and minimal glycogen. the rest is water (70-75%) and minerals. This makes 800-1000 cals per pound MAX. This is why it's so easy to lose LBM if you screw your cutting diet up, but much harder to lose the same amount of fat. Adipose tissue has 300+g of fat per pound which makes it more than 3 times as calorie dense as muscle. The positive side is that you only need an extra 200g of protein deposited as muscle to gain a pound of LBM! Of course getting it deposited is the hard part......

What you said is true if you're only looking at the product, but the question is really twofold: How much energy is required to assemble the muscle, and how much energy is in the product. You answered the second part, but fabrication of muscle is a process that is only 30-40% efficient.

Therefore, it takes about 1600 kcal to assemble the muscle, and the product, i.e., the muscle itself, contains about 900 kcal worth of energy. Add them up, and it took you about 2500 kcal to make a pound of muscle. And if your body metabolizes the muscle back to energy, you only get about 900 kcal back.