[quote]Therizza wrote:
Anyone think the doctor in aforementioned article is telling a half-truth? As in 6 calories per pound of muscle, but that’s if you lay in bed all day and do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. The problem being the readership of the article take it as ‘1 pound of muscle can ONLY burn 6 calories a day’.
Following the article’s logic, the average(im just pulling this example out of thin air but you get the point), 160 pound man @ 15% bf would have ~136 lbs. LBM, of which 40%(54.4 lbs.) is muscle. According to this doctor that man would only use up 326.4 calories a day with his muscles. Take that from the ‘normal’ caloric intake of 2000 calories, that leaves 1673.6 calories. Therefore, people like Prof. X would only need to consume ~500 calories because that is all his muscles would need. (That is assuming 250 pounds @ 17% bf)
All my bullshit aside, we can see that the proposition that 1 pound of muscle can ONLY burn 6 calories a day is preposterous. [/quote]
maybe 1 lb of muscle sitting in a petri dish…
my point exactly. the doctor doesn’t take into account increasing muscle mass while decreasing fat stored will improve insulin sensitivity and a whole host of other factors. but this is splitting hairs about an article that’s as good as bunk.
How about this.
When I was 165 lbs, my RMR (measured with an accurate device), was 2220 cals/day.
I’m now 35 lbs heavier. I can redo the test and report back. 
I always thought, just as you could train to increase the work capacity of a muscle - i.e., make the tissue more efficient and more powerful - the same tissue has a RANGE of calories that it could use to do “work.” Maybe that 1 lb of muscle needs 6 calories to simply exist - and I bet the caloric requirements of muscle tissue are not uniform, so heart muscle tissue is different from quads from pecs from calves…etc. - but much more calories to actually do work, which is what you’d assume someone who wants to change their physique will be doing regularly (hitting the gym).
The real calories burned come from carrying more muscle and being able to move more weight as a result. You move more weight for the same distance, you do more work requiring more input energy. Plus, people’s overall work capacity improves the more advanced their training becomes (assuming they pay attention to nutrition and rest). The become more efficient at exercise and can do more without getting as tired.
The other thing that gets me is the concept of metabolism. People think “metabolism” and immediately associate it with fat burning. I think that’s a poor interpretation of the concept.
Metabolism means MOVING nutrients around, period. The higher your metabolism, yes you can burn more fat but you will also build muscle faster, remove waste faster, repair tissue faster, etc.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
ukrainian wrote:
http://health.msn.com/blogs/healthy-diet-fit-body-post.aspx?post=1179226>1=31036
This proves we are all on steroids since we’re gaining weight too fast and are not complete fatasses due to a lack of cardio.
*Note, my comments were sarcastic.
That was overly simplistic. If one pound of muscle only requires 6 calories extra, then someone who gained 100lbs of lean body mass would only have to eat 600 more calories a day from when they were 100lbs less to maintain that weight???
Really?
It doesn’t work like that in real life…making that article full of shit.
Bodybuilders have been ahead of much of medical science for about 20 years now. You would think someone would take the time to look in a gym to see how things really work out in the real world. If you gain 100lbs, you are going to need more than 600 extra calories to maintain that much and gain even more.
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This is something that I have thought for a long time. I don’t think it’s so clear cut and linear. X pounds requiring Y calories and such. I also think that there are personal differences within people, some burn more or less with a given bodyweight. The idea of 100 lbs requiring only 600 extra cals might work, if you were only breathing and blinking. once you start moving that weight around, I think it takes much more to both move it, and repair it.
It is true that muscles only use 6 calories per pound a day… if they aren’t doing anything. The increase of 30-50 cal/pound that we are all experiencing is because of things like increased work performed while lifting, EPOC, and the energy required to repair tissue that is damaged from lifting.
This is another one of those articles that takes data totally out of context and presents it as relevant to the average person. It is true (according to this study, although I have read another study to the same effect) that if a man starts working out, gains 10lbs of muscle, and then totally stops working out his metabolism will only have increased by 60 cal/day. However, nobody is suggesting that as a method of weight loss, if he’d have keep lifting his metabolism would have increased by 300-500 cal/day beyond what his metabolism was when he was just starting his lifting (which in turn is higher than before he started lifting.)
The guy that wrote the article owns a chain of health clubs ( Bellevue health club may become nation's largest ) he’s taking data from a legitimate study and taking it out of context to promote his own agenda. Its not researchers (in this case they were just wondering how many calories a muscle takes to exist, not trying to discredit weightlifting as a method of weight loss) that we need to be pissed off at, its the people that twist results for their own purposes.
[quote]brownab wrote:
Its not researchers (in this case they were just wondering how many calories a muscle takes to exist, not trying to discredit weightlifting as a method of weight loss) that we need to be pissed off at, its the people that twist results for their own purposes.
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That’s basically what I am thinking. It’s this guy that ruins all desire to lift and get stronger for a lot of beginners, and that is just wrong.