More muscle = how many calories?

This is similar to the recent topic of how many calories to consume on days that you work out.

So, say you've calculated your BMR. You lift weights and lose fat but gain muscle, so you weigh the same. I'm I'm correct, now that you have more muscle, your BMR goes up and you burn more calories than you used to, right?

If this is true, how do you adjust your calorie intake to match the muscle you gain? If anyone has any advice or would mind sharing how they adjusted their calories, I would really appreciate it!

Sorry not to be any help, just wondering the same thing...........

Ya but the added burn isn't huge.

 

There are formulas that look at BF levels but I'd personally suggest looking at your food logs.

If  the calorie level you're eating is leading to weight loss then you know it's below your maintance level. No matter what the formulas claim.

 

The real world always trumps everything else. 

 

 As an isolated system, a pound of muscle burns 10-12 calories. However, the net effect of the increased blood flow, digestion and oxygen use neccessary to support that muscle means your metabolism adds a net burn of 50 calories a day per extra pound of muscle - up to a certain point anyway.

 Figuring out how much to adjust your calorie intake to support your muscle is mostly a matter of keeping a food log and experimenting to see what level of calories is maintenance for you.

 

Thanks for the quick replies, guys!

That's interesting, melkor. I didn't expect to get any numerical or specific answers like yours! Thanks for the info. :)

If you are getting more muscle then at some point I would start to think about redoing you BMI clssification and that should tell you right there. I think the main change would be in the build of your body.

 

 

Original Post by muttlover:

... You lift weights and lose fat but gain muscle...

This is contradictory statement in nearly all cases though.

In order to "gain" muscle you have to be in a calories "surplus". That way the harder you lift, the more muscle you tear down, so the body will expend those calories to rebuild the muscle fibers and grow.

If you are losing fat, you have to be in a calorie "deficit", therefor you won't be gaining muscle, only sustaining the muscle you already have, and in most cases losing muscle while you lose fat. Most people will experience a muscle memory type effect, where the muscle they had before, comes back once they start lifting again... but that is usually a temporary effect over the course of a long fat loss cycle.

Its is nearly impossible for most people to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't lift! More calories burned!!

 

 

I think the difference is muttlover said you lose fat muttlover did not say weight.  There is definitely a difference between losing fat and losing weight.  In weight lifting you are gaining muscle not losing weight, but you are losing fat.

Original Post by dmacato:

Original Post by muttlover:

... You lift weights and lose fat but gain muscle...

This is contradictory statement in nearly all cases though.

In order to "gain" muscle you have to be in a calories "surplus". That way the harder you lift, the more muscle you tear down, so the body will expend those calories to rebuild the muscle fibers and grow.

If you are losing fat, you have to be in a calorie "deficit", therefor you won't be gaining muscle, only sustaining the muscle you already have, and in most cases losing muscle while you lose fat. Most people will experience a muscle memory type effect, where the muscle they had before, comes back once they start lifting again... but that is usually a temporary effect over the course of a long fat loss cycle.

Its is nearly impossible for most people to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't lift! More calories burned!!

 

 

 It's definitely possible and it's made my life difficult.

I hit my goal weight in April and bought new clothes. They've been getting progressively looser since then despite the scale holding steady. I've been building muscle mass though. The only explanation is that I'm still burning body fat. I'm also freezing all the time, although I realize as a man, I can go down to ridiculously low body fat levels and still be ok.

I don't think it is nearly that simple.  Burning off fat and building muscle in just the right proportions to keep weight steady is a pretty good trick.  Most people probably do not come close to that.  The largest accumulation of fat is the layer just inside the skin.  Increases and decreases get distributed across the whole body.  So if you have gone from fit to fat, you waist and hips are the most obvious signposts but you have also been accumulating extra girth in your arms, legs, chest, neck, etc.  As you trim back to a normal size, you trim everywhere even though a shrinking waistline is the most obvious signpost.

I believe, that when you build muscle mass the growth appears in different areas and is more or less a function of what you are doing to build the muscle mass.  So in the process you describe here, you needed new clothes because your waist, hips, chest (?) and neck (?) shrank.  But if you added muscle mass to compensate for the reduction fat weight, it should be showing up somewhere.  Muscle not only has weight, it has volume. 

Where have you gotten bigger?

My arms and legs are bigger, but still smaller than they used to be when it was all fat. 

You can't really gain muscle and lower your body fat percentage at the same time.  It's to hard for your body to be in different metabolic states at the same time.  If your in a muscle building anabolic state your fat will increase as well. 

I think the confusion is possibly the assumption that resistance training equals muscle gain.  So when people who weight train  see the fat come off and more defined muscles the conclude I gained muscle and lost fat at the same time.  This is not necessarily the case though.  There may not have been any muscle gain at all just fat loss (which shows more muscle) that made it appear that way.

 You can strengthen muscle without making them any bigger but if you're looking to gain muscle (make bigger) you've got to lift heavy and eat heavy and cut the fat later.

If that were really the case, my weight would continue dropping. But it's not. Regardless, I can only go by what I'm seeing.

The actual number is about 6 calories per pound of muscle per day. Not much at all really. But it does add up.

It is possible for someone with average genetics to lose fat and gain muscle "at the same time" provided they eat near calorie balance.

Bodybuilders generally don't do that, because it's far less efficient than the alternative:  eating a significant calorie surplus in a "bulking up" phase (during which both muscle and fat are gained), then switching to a significant calorie deficit in a "getting ripped / cut / shredded" phase (during which the new fat is lost while trying to retain as much of the new muscle as possible).  Lather, rinse, repeat, year after year.

For someone near their desired body composition, it's a real tradeoff to make:  uniform but slow progress versus the psychological strain of "bulking" and "cutting" phases but faster progress overall.

muttlover, in practice deciding is easy:  pay attention to what you eat.  If the scale is going up, you're in calorie surplus, if down, calorie deficit.  Adjust accordingly.  No a priori formula is nearly as useful as simply paying attention.

Great question and answers! I'm still confused...

I'm losing weight due to calorie deficit. Body fat from 34% to 27%. I realise the % is relative to body weight, but even taking that into account I have lost a significant amount of fat. However, I am also making improvements in weight lifting/resistance (more reps and heavier weights).

Is getting stronger different than gaining muscle? Am I really not gaining muscle or, worse, not losing fat?

ser25, many factors go into strength besides just muscle size. It's very common for two classes of "average" people to gain major strength during a calorie deficit: beginners to strength training, and people who used to be much stronger regaining strength.

Calorie deficit or not, beginner strength increases are largely due to neurological and metabolic adaptations. These include things like developing better coordination between muscle groups (especially helpful for "compound"-- multi-joint --lifts), and improving the ability of the brain and nerve pathways to "convince" more muscle fibers to contract (all-out muscular effort is rare in everyday life, and nerves have to learn how to force it, which takes significant time and practice).

Looking at your profile, you started out at 158.8 pounds. At BF% of 34, that means you had about 54 lbs (54 = 158.8 x 0.34) of fat and 104.8 lbs of lean mass (non-fat: 104.8 = 158.8 - 54). If you're at 138 lbs now with BF% 27, you have 37 1/4 lbs of fat now and 100 3/4 lbs of lean mass. So, if these numbers were 100% accurate (they're not -- all practical methods of measuring BF% are subject to significant error), you've lost about 17 lbs of fat so far and also lost about 4 lbs of lean mass.

You're doing pretty good on those counts, but not great. It's hard for most people to lose significant fat without losing significant lean mass too, but this is more a question of knowledge than of inherent difficulty. The single best source of info about this I know of is Tom Venuto's "Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle" e-book, which takes 341 fluff-free pages to explain all the (drug-free) techniques bodybuilders and fitness models use in a fat-cut phase to preserve muscle.

Hard strength-training 2 or 3 times a week, getting adequate protein, and eating small but frequent balanced meals (5 or 6 each day) are some of the more important techniques.

As above, it's expected you'll grow stronger despite losing some lean mass, although the rate of strength increase will slow down more the further you get from "beginner" status.

tgpish: Thanks for the info.

"You're doing pretty good on those counts, but not great."

Wow - that's an exceptionally harsh comment to start my day, considering the time and enormous effort it took to get this far. I'm here because I want to learn and become a better person, not to have my apparently-inadequate efforts judged with such a lack of sensitivity.

ser25, sorry, but I'm unclear on what it is you find offensive.  Of course that wasn't my intent!  Losing 17 pounds of fat is great, and cutting BF% from 34% to 27% is great, the specific part that's not great (& I could have been clearer about this) is that (based on the info you gave) about 19% of your weight loss so far was due to losing lean mass.  That's pretty good-- better than average, I'd say --but, no, that specific part isn't "great".  Check a dictionary ; e.g., "great:  remarkable or out of the ordinary in degree or magnitude or effect". 

not to have my apparently-inadequate effort

Which part of "pretty good" did you read as "inadequate"?  You're doing fine.  Does it really belittle your efforts to hear that it's possible to do even better w.r.t. preserving lean tissue?  Some people would take the hint as intended and run with it .

You're right, I'm sorry. The slow progress is frustrating sometimes and I was overly sensitive to what I thought was criticism.

Sarah, thanks -- that's very gracious of you!

I should have asked whether you care about losing lean mass -- not everyone does.  If you do , then two things:

1. If you didn't follow "the math" in reply #16, let me know and I'll explain in more detail.  Once you get the hang of it, it's easy to compute your lbs of fat and non-fat weight from total weight and BF%.  That in turn lets you know (a decent guess about) whether you're losing too much lean tissue.
2. Your profile shows that, most recently, you lost 8.4 lbs since September 20.  That's probably too fast if you care about preserving muscle:  as a rule of thumb, it's very hard to avoid losing muscle too if you lose more than 1% of your bodyweight per week, and whatever your maximum "pure fat" loss rate may be, it gets harder the less fat you have remaining.  So I hope you don't think "slow progress" applies to the last month!  If you want to retain your lean muscle, you'd almost certainly be better off losing weight at, say, half the rate you've achieved over the last month.  The slower the weight loss, the easier it is to lose only fat.

In any case, congratulations on the progress you've made so far!  It's great to have your goal in sight.