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Comment by logicchains

2 years ago

Muscle tissue burns 7-10 calories per pound per day. This means someone who gains 100 pounds of muscle (e.g. from 150 lbs untrained to a 250 lbs bodybuilder) would increase their metabolism by 700-1000 calories, almost a 50% increase in the average daily male calorie requirements of around 2000 calories.

Putting on 100 lbs of muscle is impossible without steroids for 99% of people even with 10-15 years of constant training.

Estimates vary but 50 lbs of lean muscle mass is generally considered the natural maximum for men.

Someone in their first year of consistent serious training can realistically put on 15 pounds of muscle. The year after that it drops to 5 pounds.

That is an insane amount of training - big lifestyle changes!

I increased my calorific needs by 1000 a day by doing a 10K run (1hr) before breakfast.

Still a 160lb weakling :)

  • That seems high. Someone your weight would generally only burn about 750 kcal on that workout.

    • 750 kcals is insanely high for a 10k training run. If you hold your HR to Z2, 620-640 kcals would be my ballpark expectation.

    • It’s what Strava says I’m burning so I can only go by that. 750 would still be above the low end of the range quoted by the OP.

      The amount of extra food I needed to start eating!

      2 replies →

Do you have a source? I would expect the first pounds of muscle to affect metabolism more than the 100th pound, but that's my immediate intuituion.