7# of muscle =1# of Fat?
BWT 297#
I was just musing over how many calories are in a pound of muscle and I came up with the following:
1g of protein=4cal, and muscle is ~75% water. If we assume that muscle is basicaly all protein and water we get 1,000 Cal/ kg of muscle or 450 Cal/#! A pound of fat contains 3,500 Cal.
So losing a # of muscle is ~7 times as easy as losing a pound of fat! OTOH, gaining a pound of muscle would take a very modest surplus of calories. No need to pig out when bulking up. Even 100 extra calories of protein/day is probably enough.
This probably explains the incredible pace of weightloss experienced by gastric bypass patients. It doesn't take a big calorie deficit to drop a lot of muscle.
So I can easily drop 20# in a month by running a modest caloric deficit of a few hundered calories per day. The real trick is to lose 20# of fat, which is going to take some real discipline. I tested that discipline lastnight by making Christmas cookies for tonight's lab Christmas party. Of, course I had to test out the product but I limited myself to two small cookies and a sampling of the semi-sweet ganache (great stuff:semi-sweet Callabaut chocolate, heavy cream and butter).
I was just musing over how many calories are in a pound of muscle and I came up with the following:
1g of protein=4cal, and muscle is ~75% water. If we assume that muscle is basicaly all protein and water we get 1,000 Cal/ kg of muscle or 450 Cal/#! A pound of fat contains 3,500 Cal.
So losing a # of muscle is ~7 times as easy as losing a pound of fat! OTOH, gaining a pound of muscle would take a very modest surplus of calories. No need to pig out when bulking up. Even 100 extra calories of protein/day is probably enough.
This probably explains the incredible pace of weightloss experienced by gastric bypass patients. It doesn't take a big calorie deficit to drop a lot of muscle.
So I can easily drop 20# in a month by running a modest caloric deficit of a few hundered calories per day. The real trick is to lose 20# of fat, which is going to take some real discipline. I tested that discipline lastnight by making Christmas cookies for tonight's lab Christmas party. Of, course I had to test out the product but I limited myself to two small cookies and a sampling of the semi-sweet ganache (great stuff:semi-sweet Callabaut chocolate, heavy cream and butter).
posted by Robert W at 11:18 AM
2 Comments:
Funny. Last night I was calculating that if I ate 1350 calories a day for a year, I'd lose approximately 78lbs. I enjoy the number crunching.
Me too. In reality, I diet on and off hitting various plateaus for long stretches. Most of my "plateau busting" has been when I carefully counted calories and weighed out my portions.
I think I am averaging around 2# week, but most have it has occurred as stretches of 4-5#/week separated by weeks of no loss.
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