Adam C. Stewart
The old-fashioned gym tradition suggested that each pound of muscle burned 50 calories a day. The most common number that you will hear from scientists is 6 calories. The truth is somewhere in the middle.
A recent discussion with Shane Duquette on the Mass 1 Facebook group got me thinking about something I hadn’t thought much about in ages: how many extra calories do you burn per day when you gain a pound of muscle?
When you start exercising, it’s almost a rite of passage to “learn” that building muscle significantly increases your daily energy expenditure. You can hear it from a big guy at the gym, you can read it in an online article, or you can meet him on social networks, but you are practically guaranteed to “learn” that muscles burn a ton of calories. even at rest. I’ve seen suggestions ranging from 20 calories per pound per day in the low end to 100 calories per pound per day in the high end, with 30 to 50 being the typical number.
It would be nice if this were true – I think everyone would like to start exercising, gain 10 pounds of muscle and discover that they can consume an extra 300 to 500 calories a day, regardless of their activity level. Unfortunately…it that’s not true.
On the contrary, skeletal muscle only burns about 6 calories per pound (13 calories per kilogram) per day at rest, according to the study. So if you see people suggesting that building muscle significantly increases your energy expenditure, chances are that a scientific person will step in and “correct” the record by saying that building 10 pounds of muscle should only increase your energy expenditure by about 60 calories.per day.
However, the truth is not so simple. It is true that the basal metabolism specific to the tissues of the muscle is only 6 calories per pound per day, but the energy expenditure is higher than the basal metabolism.
You can divide your total energy consumption in different ways, but for our purposes Here, the easiest way is to simply sort the energy consumption into two buckets: active energy consumption and non-active energy consumption.
Non-active energy consumption includes basic metabolism (The energy that you spend every day to simply “keep the lights on” – keep your organs working, perform basic cellular processes, etc.).) and The thermal effect of food (The energy you burn to digest, absorb and metabolize the food you eat). Active energy consumption includes everything else – The energy that you spend walking, sitting up straight instead of lying down, running, lifting weights, washing dishes, fidgeting, etc.
One pound of muscle mass affects both categories of energy expenditure. The figure of 6 calories per pound per day only takes into account the effects of muscle on non-active energy expenditure. To estimate the impact of muscle building on active energy expenditure, we can rely on a simple relationship: at a given activity level, active energy expenditure changes linearly with body mass.
Calories are a unit Of energy and energy consumption changes with the amount of work you do, provided that the total economy of the exercise does not change radically. Here we use the body definition of work: work = force × distance. Moreover, Force = Mass × acceleration. So, Work = Mass × Acceleration × Distance. In other words, if the acceleration and the distance remain constant (that is, if they move in approximately the same way), the work, and therefore the energy consumption, changes by about 1: 1 with the Mass.
If the Mass you move increases by 1%, your active energy expenditure should increase by about 1%, assuming that your activity level does not change. This is true whether the total mass increases due to an increase in muscle mass, an increase in fat mass, an increase in hydration or simply the wearing of heavier clothing.
It is therefore sufficient to estimate their active energy consumption. To do this, we need to do a little calculation. Don’t Worry. This is simple mathematics. There is also a calculator at the end of this article that will do all the math for you.
