Gaining muscle to lose weight

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Time and time again I hear the statement of one of the benefits of exercising for weight loss is to gain muscle which burns more calories than fat thus increasing your metabolism to make it easier to lose weight.

One pound of muscle burns 7-10 calories per day compared to 2-3 calories per day for fat.  So the statement is technically true that fat does burn less calories per pound than muscle.  The problem is that fat does still burn calories, so after losing a few pound that 3 lbs. of muscle you worked hard to gain doesn’t help your weight loss journey any better.  Lets look at an example:

Bob is 220 lbs. with 30lbs being fat and 30 lbs. being muscle, after hitting the gym hard he gains 3 pounds of more muscle with 4 months of hard work, raising his metabolism by optimistically 30 calories.  So assuming Bob is very good and does not eat one extra calories before his muscle mass increase in just a little over 3 years he will have lost 1 lb. of fat because of this boost in his metabolism.  Though now he is less 1 lb. of fat, he now only is a 27 calorie deficit.

Not to be discouraging the actual event of listing weights does burn extra calories and adding muscle mass is good to strengthen yourself as well as your bones, and many people find these extra muscles attractive so obviously there are some obvious benefits…though unfortunately “boosting your metabolism” as some expert like to claim just a very good one.

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