kitchenelf
Chef Extraordinaire
There's about 100 calories in a pound of mussels - If you cook them in wine and other stuff it will go up 
How many calories in a pound of muscle?
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There's about 100 calories in a pound of mussels - If you cook them in wine and other stuff it will go up
Sure there will be some ppl that are extremes, but if there is a typical guide for a pound of fat I figure there should be one for muscle. It seems odd to me we just use the same advice for muscle gain as we do fat when one seems to require much more energy than the other.
Andy M.
Certified Pretend Chef
If you consume 3500 more calories than your body uese, you gain a pound. As you are not using these calories, your body stores it as fat.
If you consume 3500 added calories and increase your exercise levels to burn an additional 3500 calories, your body won't store it as fat but use it to fuel your additional exercise, whih results in more muscle.
Following this process, I don't think you can calculate how much muscle you will gain as a result. It may be a pound or much less. There are a lot of variables that would effect the efficiency with which individual bodies work to build muscle.
If you consume 3500 added calories and increase your exercise levels to burn an additional 3500 calories, your body won't store it as fat but use it to fuel your additional exercise, whih results in more muscle.
Following this process, I don't think you can calculate how much muscle you will gain as a result. It may be a pound or much less. There are a lot of variables that would effect the efficiency with which individual bodies work to build muscle.
That wouldn't work. If you burn 3500extra and eat 3500 extra there is no weight gain. You need to eat more than you need to gain weight, be that weight fat or muscle. I am a weightlifter, I have figured over the years how much I need to stay the same or gain lose/weight. I'm just interested in a typical figure for muscle gain as there is one for fat, and with a guide for muscle, I'd also like to know how that was calculated. Also, we don't need to consider individuals' variables, we can just make the statement that whatever an individual requires if he/she eats 3500cals more than he/she can use (be that for maintenance or used in building muscle) he/she will then gain a pound of fat. You see we don't need to know someone's needs, we still have the guide that 3500 makes a pound of fat, but we have no such value for muscle, just guides that say eat a little extra and try not to gain more than x amount of weight or more will be fat. Oh well....
And, that is where you are missing the point ... fat is accumulated from excess calories - muscle is built thru work, some calories fuel the muscles' needs to perform the exercise and some provide the building blocks to build muscle during the recovery period.
Now, stop and think about this for a minute ... IF there was a magic formula of how many calories to eat to gain x pounds of lean muscle mass ... every guy could sit on the couch, watch TV, and look like Arnold or Lou without ever breaking a sweat! Joe Weider would certainly have already patented it and put it in a can if that was possible.
Sorry, dude - it doesn't work that way. And, FWIW - two guys starting out at the same weight and size - eating the same diet and exercising the same will not have the same muscle building results.
I didn't say I wasn't lifting. I still don't know why there's no figure for muscle or if it really is the same as fat give/take, how they calculated it.
The reason there is no figure for "claories consumed = muscle mass increase" like there is for "3,500 excess calories consumed = 1 lb fat" is because they are not the same things.
As I said before - fat is accumulated - muscle is built - and building muscle depends on a lot of factors other than just calories.
I could say the same thing about fat. Eating an excess of cals doesn't necessarily equate to a particular amount of fat bcz of different metabolisms, yet, we still have a figure for a guesstimate. I don't see a reasonable difference, they're both subject to variance as a result of individual body types. Bodytype suggests both disposition toward fat gain/loss and muscle gain/loss. What other factors are there?
Yeah, you could say that - but look again at what you just said, it's wrong (as stated). Excess calories are those comsumed above those metabolized. What makes a difference in whether the excess calories goes to fat or muscle depends on the source of the calories, amount of calories consumed at one time and frequency, number of feedings per day, and exercise (intensity and duration).
You, and some other previous posters, want an exact (guesstimate) number of calories required to gain 1-Lb of lean muscle so here it is - 3,500 calories.
How many calories you need to consume is fairly simple to calculate:
(your body weight x (100 - % body fat) x exercise factor) + 750
Exercise factors:
11 if you do little or no exercise at all
13 if you do light exercise (1 to 2 hours per week) (most of us)
15 if you do moderate exercise (3 to 5 hours per week)
17 if you do heavy exercise (6 or more hours per week)
19 if you do heavy body-building exercise (8-10 or more hours per week)
Nutrition: The source of the calories, how many are consumed at one time, when they are consumed, the number of times you eat per day - these are some other factors that make the difference between gaining fat and building muscle from the same number of calories.
There are sites devoted to body building that go into greater detail - if you're really curious you can google them. I thought I posted a couple of links - oops I DID ... you might want to back up and read them. FYI: I don't waste the time to look-up and post links to sites unless they are relevant.
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I agree on the best ways to partition towards muscle, but just as a nitpick, it's wrong to say excess are those that are not metabolised. Metabolism is any processing of nutrients, excess or not, they are all processed whether or not they are burned off or stored.
I'm not after a plan to gain muscle, I have that down. I am just interested in the energetic cost to build a pound of muscle. If it is 3500cals (guide) then my final question is, how was that calculated? Isn't it a bit coincidentally suspicious it's the same for fat although fat is much higher in energy? That would mean the energy value of muscle which would be well below that of fat by itself, would be pretty balanced with fat when the energy for the extra complexity of muscle components was all tallied up.
Dear all, I have no clue what are you talking about but using some basic engineering principles, I will drop my two cents:
Quoting scharf.: "I am a weightlifter, I have figured over the years how much I need to stay the same or gain lose/weight. I'm just interested in a typical figure for muscle gain as there is one for fat"
If you know approx. how many calories you need to keep the same/gain/lose weight, then do the following experiment.
a) Check your BMI for your desired/regular/normal weight.
Calculate your muscle weight based on body weight and BMI %.
b) Increase your calories ingestion and your gym routine for a certain period of time.
Both increases should be controlled and monitored, you should gain muscle weight.
c) Verify your BMI and calculate your muscle weight again for your new body weight.
If the increases were significant, you should have higher muscle weight.
You can estimate now, the muscle weight increase based on the calories and gym routine changes.
Since there are two variables (in theory, I will explain more later), you can't associate the muscle weight gains just to calorie ingestion. I believe it probably better to associate it to the gm routine since calories are easier to monitor, therefore, keep as a constant for this experiment.
All of this is assuming your body functions and muscle weight changes are Linear variables, which I am sure they are not. I'd venture to say they are time, body weight and total muscle weight (BMI) dependant.
Linear variables explanation: By this, I mean that muscle gains are probably fast in the beginning of a program (time dependancy) but not so fast after an adaptation period. Muscle weight also is dependant in total body weight; this is harder to explain but think the reverse: a heavier person will burn more calories doing exactly the same excercise than a lighter person because of the added effort required and muscle weight gain is certainly dependant on your BMI, the higher the BMI is, the harder will be to gain weight.
Since these variables are not strictly linear, it is pretty hard to establish a general guideline since we are and function differently, and even ourselves can gain/lose muscle weight according to different circumstances.
I hope this makes sense to you. I put with some engineering terms what some other fellows have already explained but I guess using this, you can calculate an estimated number.
Oops, I didn't read the last comment that Michael in FtW posted.
Quoting scharf.: "I am a weightlifter, I have figured over the years how much I need to stay the same or gain lose/weight. I'm just interested in a typical figure for muscle gain as there is one for fat"
If you know approx. how many calories you need to keep the same/gain/lose weight, then do the following experiment.
a) Check your BMI for your desired/regular/normal weight.
Calculate your muscle weight based on body weight and BMI %.
b) Increase your calories ingestion and your gym routine for a certain period of time.
Both increases should be controlled and monitored, you should gain muscle weight.
c) Verify your BMI and calculate your muscle weight again for your new body weight.
If the increases were significant, you should have higher muscle weight.
You can estimate now, the muscle weight increase based on the calories and gym routine changes.
Since there are two variables (in theory, I will explain more later), you can't associate the muscle weight gains just to calorie ingestion. I believe it probably better to associate it to the gm routine since calories are easier to monitor, therefore, keep as a constant for this experiment.
All of this is assuming your body functions and muscle weight changes are Linear variables, which I am sure they are not. I'd venture to say they are time, body weight and total muscle weight (BMI) dependant.
Linear variables explanation: By this, I mean that muscle gains are probably fast in the beginning of a program (time dependancy) but not so fast after an adaptation period. Muscle weight also is dependant in total body weight; this is harder to explain but think the reverse: a heavier person will burn more calories doing exactly the same excercise than a lighter person because of the added effort required and muscle weight gain is certainly dependant on your BMI, the higher the BMI is, the harder will be to gain weight.
Since these variables are not strictly linear, it is pretty hard to establish a general guideline since we are and function differently, and even ourselves can gain/lose muscle weight according to different circumstances.
I hope this makes sense to you. I put with some engineering terms what some other fellows have already explained but I guess using this, you can calculate an estimated number.
Oops, I didn't read the last comment that Michael in FtW posted.
buckytom
Chef Extraordinaire
it depends on what you call "building muscle". there's different types of muscle fibers, with different densities. essentially, there's slow twitch and fast twitch muscle fibers (and sub-cats of each), each with their own characteristics of athletic strength.
i think the best answer stated here is there's no fixed number because of the number of variables involved, the most basic of which are genetics and epi-genetics.
Good answer. I'm a member of a few bodybuilding boards and this hasn't been covered directly. I have actually just found something which is pretty useful. It is a list of laymen points discerned from multiple and complex studies on the issue of fat loss/muscle loss, but you can take the reverse to see this from a muscle gain/fat standpoint. In the context of burning muscle for fuel it mentions a pound of muscle is 600cals, but this doesn't necessarily mean it only takes that much to create it. As you have mentioned the guide here says to experiment to see how weight changes. On a deficit of 3500 lose it slowly and most maybe be fat, a loss of ~1lb. Lose it very quickly and much maybe muscle- worst case all---> 6lbs weight loss as each lb muscle gives only 600cals. Once again the ratios of loss of fat/muscle depend on the persons type and size. eg the more fat you have the more readily your body will lose a higher proportion of fat than muscle. Going back to my question, the amount of energy to gain an amount of muscle could be estimated from experimenting.
However, while the general figure for loss is 600 for muscle, it does seem to be implied for gain is 3500 as it is recommended to increase daily by 500. With that in mind I'm interested in how the shortfall of 2900cals comes into play when the product itself is only 600. Clearly buidling muscle is not like building fat stores, but it would be interesting to see how the energy was split up into various parts of the building process.
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I just came across conflicting info on cals to gain muscle, according to this source you do (variance aside which you can adjust for) only need as many cals to build muscle as it gives when it's broken down, ie 600cals for 1lb per week, or about 100 cals per day surplus.
Now I am tempted to dismiss the small energy requirement but, most of muscle is water, and, the 500 per day increases which are mentioned are typically the upper end of recommendations, for hard gainers some of whom go even higher. The lower ranges I have seen are daily increases of 1-250cals, so perhaps this figure of 600 is accurate theoretically.
Now I am tempted to dismiss the small energy requirement but, most of muscle is water, and, the 500 per day increases which are mentioned are typically the upper end of recommendations, for hard gainers some of whom go even higher. The lower ranges I have seen are daily increases of 1-250cals, so perhaps this figure of 600 is accurate theoretically.
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Let's conduct an experiment to put your theory to the test, schnarf.
Since you know how many calories you need to consume to matain your weight without either weight gain or loss ....
Without any other adjustments to your exercise/diet routine ... add 100 cals per day for 4 weeks (28 days). Since the source of the calories seems to be insignficant (you are only looking at clories and not their source, right) - make it 1 Tablespoon US (15 ml) Extra virgin olive oil divided between the number of meals you consume per day (that's about 120 calories/day).
If your theory is right, that +600 cals make a pound of muscle, you should gain about 5.6 lbs in 4 weeks.
Since you know how many calories you need to consume to matain your weight without either weight gain or loss ....
Without any other adjustments to your exercise/diet routine ... add 100 cals per day for 4 weeks (28 days). Since the source of the calories seems to be insignficant (you are only looking at clories and not their source, right) - make it 1 Tablespoon US (15 ml) Extra virgin olive oil divided between the number of meals you consume per day (that's about 120 calories/day).
If your theory is right, that +600 cals make a pound of muscle, you should gain about 5.6 lbs in 4 weeks.
You're right, I didn't mention source but although I used to lean towards the calorie type idea like most ppl, I have been corresponding with a very well informed nutritional post doc who has convinced many that energy is the overriding factor of importance and not whether you take in slightly more carbs or fat. If I could keep my activity constant I would perform that experiment and I would use the extra virgin too, maybe even a side trial with carbs extra instead just to see. The good thing about the 600 guide is that if it holds you could estimate muscle/fat gain by the scales if your cals were moderate. If you gained only 1 pound from 3500 you'd know it was all fat, if you gained near 6lbs you'd know it would have to be all muscle(simplified).
However, my estimate of daily needs is only an estimate +/- a few hundred cals bcz my activity level is not always the same.
If I ever do have several weeks of similar activity I'll let you know, but don't hold your breath.
