Muscle Building Myths
No guesses on the myth from the previous post? I'll continue on as though someone is listening...
Easily the most repeated, most believed myth in all of fitness is that "a pound of resting muscle burns 30-70 calories per day." (I hear it anywhere within those ranges, typically 35-50).
You see this myth in articles everywhere. Very smart people are quoted as stating it as fact. Though I'm not very smart, I believed it and probably said it at some point.
At first glance, it just doesn't set off alarms. But, when you start to think about it, you start to see that it just can't be right.
If you take an average in-shape man for example, a guy who weighs say 180 lbs. and has a body fat percentage of 15%. This puts his lean body mass (LBM) at 153 lbs. Though it would be difficult to get the exact number, 45% is a good estimate of how much of LBM is actually muscle in the average person.
So, about 69 lbs. of our sample man's bodyweight is actually muscle mass.
According to the myth, the sample man must take in between 2,070 calories (30x69) and 4,830 (70x69) calories just to maintain his resting muscle tissue. That's a lot of calories just for maintaining muscle.
The average 180 lb. man probably takes in between 2,500 and 3,000 calories to maintain his physique in good shape.
So, by the logic of the myth the vast majority (or all and then some) of the sample man's diet is needed to just maintain his resting muscle tissue???? That certainly doesn't make sense. What happens when he starts moving? What about maintaining the other 111 lbs. of his bodyweight?
I googled the question and found this - How Many Calories Does Muscle Really Burn?.
That makes sense. 6 calories per pound of muscle makes sense. That works.
The take home lesson? In fitness, just because a lot of people say something is so, doesn't make it so. Not even when those people have a bunch of initials after their name. Not even when it is published repeatedly in top magazines.
Sometimes things that don't immediately set off alarm bells just get repeated so much that they become accepted as fact.
2 more examples: Will Brink has offered a cash reward for anyone who can show him any basis for the commonly believed myth that "the body can only utilize 30 grams of protein per meal." He hasn't had any takers.
And, the one that annoys me the most often, "the natural trainer can only gain 5-15 lbs. of muscle in a year." Yeah, right. My rant on that one is here - How Much Muscle Can You Really Expect To Gain.
JP Clifford
Easily the most repeated, most believed myth in all of fitness is that "a pound of resting muscle burns 30-70 calories per day." (I hear it anywhere within those ranges, typically 35-50).
You see this myth in articles everywhere. Very smart people are quoted as stating it as fact. Though I'm not very smart, I believed it and probably said it at some point.
At first glance, it just doesn't set off alarms. But, when you start to think about it, you start to see that it just can't be right.
If you take an average in-shape man for example, a guy who weighs say 180 lbs. and has a body fat percentage of 15%. This puts his lean body mass (LBM) at 153 lbs. Though it would be difficult to get the exact number, 45% is a good estimate of how much of LBM is actually muscle in the average person.
So, about 69 lbs. of our sample man's bodyweight is actually muscle mass.
According to the myth, the sample man must take in between 2,070 calories (30x69) and 4,830 (70x69) calories just to maintain his resting muscle tissue. That's a lot of calories just for maintaining muscle.
The average 180 lb. man probably takes in between 2,500 and 3,000 calories to maintain his physique in good shape.
So, by the logic of the myth the vast majority (or all and then some) of the sample man's diet is needed to just maintain his resting muscle tissue???? That certainly doesn't make sense. What happens when he starts moving? What about maintaining the other 111 lbs. of his bodyweight?
I googled the question and found this - How Many Calories Does Muscle Really Burn?.
That makes sense. 6 calories per pound of muscle makes sense. That works.
The take home lesson? In fitness, just because a lot of people say something is so, doesn't make it so. Not even when those people have a bunch of initials after their name. Not even when it is published repeatedly in top magazines.
Sometimes things that don't immediately set off alarm bells just get repeated so much that they become accepted as fact.
2 more examples: Will Brink has offered a cash reward for anyone who can show him any basis for the commonly believed myth that "the body can only utilize 30 grams of protein per meal." He hasn't had any takers.
And, the one that annoys me the most often, "the natural trainer can only gain 5-15 lbs. of muscle in a year." Yeah, right. My rant on that one is here - How Much Muscle Can You Really Expect To Gain.
JP Clifford
posted by JP Clifford at 3:48 AM
3 Comments:
When we go on a diet our metabolism slows down to help it manage on a lower calorie in take.
I think when we build a lot of muscle then the same sort of thing happens and that is where this myth comes from. I believe that maybe your first pound of extra muscle may burn 30 calories a day if you didn't have much to start with but once you are 50 lbs heavier the average calories burnt per lb of muscle drops significantly.
Just a guess :-)
Haven't heard of that but I wouldn't have bought it because it's insane! If a resting muscle burns 30-70 calories then we shouldn't have an obesity problem!! And if so, then how many calories does the working muscle burn? 200? 500? That would be amazing to burn all those calories but then what? how would you maintain your physique? Eating 50 eggs per day?
And I totally agree with you JP regarding what is happening in the bodybuilding supplement industry. Some people keep repeating false statements (including magazines) over and over and over till your brain eventually decides that it has to be a fact if it has been repeated so many times by experts and magazines and many other people (with no research or scientific proof!). As usual, your blogs are valuable.
So many fitness "gurus" get away with presenting lies as fact while people simply believe what they hear and never think through what they have been told.
I applaud you for taking the time to point out this error when it comes to the metabolic effect of each pound of muscle.
Although, I have to admit that I wish it was true that a pound of muscle burned that many calories. That would mean I could eat like 6,000 calories a day and never gain a pound!
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