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
There's about 100 calories in a pound of mussels - If you cook them in wine and other stuff it will go up
I don't think there's any exact answer to this. Everybody is different and will have different needs. Also, training programs are different and will produce different results in different people. With that said, we are left with general guidelines such as eat an extra 3500 calories to gain a pound (hopefully mostly muscle but there will be some fat).
.. I've known people who can add lean pounds easily and others who would eat everything in sight and never gain a pound.
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.
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.
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.
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.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.
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Also, I don't see how you can build strength without also building muscle.
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.
If we chemically analyzed a pound of fat and a pound of muscle, we would discover some interesting facts.
Both fat and muscle contain water, lipids (fats), and protein, in varying amounts: WaterLipidsProteinMuscle70%7%22%Fat22%72%6%
Calorically speaking, a pound of fat has 3,500 calories while a pound of muscle contains only 600 calories. Most of muscle is water, whereas fatty tissue is mainly composed of fat.
To gain body fat, all a person has to do is eat 1,000 extra calories a day and he will gain two pounds a week. To gain a pound of muscle a week it is necessary to first stimulate muscular growth through several high intensity workouts, and then add an additional 100 calories each day to the diet.
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.