1 pound of muscle = how many calories?

[icery]

sweet jesus people

from williams m. nutrition in health and fitness sport:

'"Muscle tissue consists of about 70% water, 22% protein and the remainder is fat, carbohydrate and minerals. Because the vast majority of muscle tissue is water, which has no caloric value, the total caloric value is only about 700-800 calories per pound of muscle. However, extra energy is needed to synthesize the muscle tissue.

It is not known exactly how many calories are necessary to form 1 pound of muscle tissue in human beings, nor it is known in what form these calories have to be consumed. The National research council notes that 5 calories are needed to support the addition of 1 gram of tissue during growth, while Forbes cites a value of 8 cal per gram in adults. Because 1 pound equals 454 grams, a range of 2300-3500 extra calories appears to be a reasonable amount....A study by Robert Bartels and his associates at Ohio State U revealed that an additional 500 calories per day resulted in nearly a 1 pound increase in lean body mass per week during a resistance-training program."

[chefbrian]

1 pound of muscle = how many calories?

Does the same figure hold true for gaining a pound of muscle?

I think you guys are all way off.

To build a pound of muscle tissue requires over 45,000 calories from what I read.

It's true the total caloric value is only about 700-800 calories per pound of muscle, but anabolism and catabolism are not reversibly equivalent.

For an explanation see MUSCLE BUILDING ... , about half way down the page gets into specifics.

[FootBallBeast]

1 pound of muscle = how many calories?



I think you guys are all way off.

To build a pound of muscle tissue requires over 45,000 calories from what I read.

It's true the total caloric value is only about 700-800 calories per pound of muscle, but anabolism and catabolism are not reversibly equivalent.

For an explanation see MUSCLE BUILDING ... , about half way down the page gets into specifics.

Hmm.. I'm skeptical. If you're talking DRY MUSCLE, then yea, that makes sense, otherwise people wouldn't be able to get the gains they've been getting on the standard 500 cals a day diet.

[meander]

sweet jesus people

from williams m. nutrition in health and fitness sport:

'"Muscle tissue consists of about 70% water, 22% protein and the remainder is fat, carbohydrate and minerals. Because the vast majority of muscle tissue is water, which has no caloric value, the total caloric value is only about 700-800 calories per pound of muscle. However, extra energy is needed to synthesize the muscle tissue.

It is not known exactly how many calories are necessary to form 1 pound of muscle tissue in human beings, nor it is known in what form these calories have to be consumed. The National research council notes that 5 calories are needed to support the addition of 1 gram of tissue during growth, while Forbes cites a value of 8 cal per gram in adults. Because 1 pound equals 454 grams, a range of 2300-3500 extra calories appears to be a reasonable amount....A study by Robert Bartels and his associates at Ohio State U revealed that an additional 500 calories per day resulted in nearly a 1 pound increase in lean body mass per week during a resistance-training program."

one pound does equal to 454 grams but shouldnt we take from this only the 22% that is actual protein? or is this the protein part of the caloric surplus that is needed for the pound/week growth?

[elmastajay]

well what i have been learning in school is that it takes 7000-9000 cal. to make a pound of muscle.

[meander]

you mean 7000-9000 cal or kcal? because if you mean cal then thats 7-9 kcal which is approximate to what icery said before.

btw i dont know what i was thinking at the time of my previous post but i have found a cambridge study that cites 1 kcal per gram of protein synthesized. i can post the link, but i am not sure if i am allowed to here. this would mean that for a pound of muscle 454 kcal are needed.

what i wanted to comment on what icery cited before now that we are necroposting is the pound per week gain that was observed in the study. it is the topic of a thousand other threads, but i think that half a pound is more reasonable for anyone past their first 6 months or so of lifting.

with this in mind then we should need 909 kcal per month, which yields 30 kcal per day surplus.

is it just me or is this too little?

if we take the 8 kcal of Forbes however we have a more reasonable 242 kcal per day...

[Rodzilla]

lyle mcdonald made reference to the number somewhere. Check his main site for articles.

[meander]

havent found anything yet. he merely states in an article that for gaining half a pound per week you are 10-20% above maintenance or 39 kcal/kg (18kcal/lb).

[BradLargeMil]

Hey, I'm a pesonal trainer, there are 2500 calories in a pound of muscle, however you can gain a pound of muscle by metabolizing stores of fat and ingesting protein, you don't have to eat 2500 calories. there are no hard and fast rules for how much you need to gain a pound of muscle.

[vegas_dude]

It really is not a calorie thing so much as a protien timing thing.

One pound of muscle will come from eating or drinking at least one pound of protien. The protien is digested in the stomach and the amino acids enter the blood where they go into the torn muscle to repair it and it gets bigger.

Your kidneys filter the aminos out of your blood about every 4 hours or so. If you do not replace them with new protien your blood is basicaly just blood and no aminos so muscle building stops.

When you finish working out, the torn muscle will continue to soak up aminos and build itself up for about 4 days, so you need to keep replenishing the protein in your stromach about every 3 waking hours for those 4 days to make fast gains.

How long it takes to gain one pound of muscle and how much protein you must ingest will vary from person to person. Maybe 1 weeks worth of protien, maybe 1 months worth of protein. Everyone is different.

Back to the calorie question. 50 grams of protein from whey protein in water is less calories than the amount of eggs you would need to eat to get 50 grams of protein, but the muscle only sees the amino acids from the protien and doesnt really care how many calories are there.


A certain number of calories are needed to put yourself into an anabolic state though, but they can really come from whatever. The ratios of fat to carbs to protien are mainly for trying to stay lean vs just build muscle.

If you want to make fast muscle gains, work out hard and eat about 2 grams of protein per pound of body weight spread over 6 meals every day.

Hope that helps :-)

[meander]

BradLargeMil, how did you come up with the 2500 calories?

vegas_dude, what you said about the certain number of calories needed? that's the caloric surplus.

I don't think that muscle will be built at the cost of deposited energy (ie. fat) in the body. At least not without any steroids or something. Because, if that were to happen, then it would have been possible to lose fat and built muscle at the same time. But it is not since the former requires a caloric deficit and the latter a caloric surplus. Our bodies, at least as far as i am concerned, will not invest in the building of an energy-costly tissue, that is muscle, when it doesn't have the adequate energy to even sustain itself.

[Alyion]

Really the best way to gain muscle mass would be to eat a very slight amount over maintainance, however you are never gonna have a set in stone intake, you may walk a little more one day, eat a little less the next and never really get anywhere. Gaining around a lb a week can cover your back.

[qweasd]

i thin´k that varies from person to person , according to the basal metabolic rate , level ot testosterone ,thyroid and other metabolism related hormones and level of activity ,, age ,genetics, type of training so the answer is not known .

[SumDumGoi]

Hey, I'm a pesonal trainer, there are 2500 calories in a pound of muscle, however you can gain a pound of muscle by metabolizing stores of fat and ingesting protein, you don't have to eat 2500 calories. there are no hard and fast rules for how much you need to gain a pound of muscle.

That would be approximately how many Calories would be in a lb of dry muscle. In the body, however, muscle always contains a large percentage of water so it would be significantly less.

454 gram x 4 Cals/gm = 1816 Calories

The 2500 Calories quoted above is from the gross amount of Calories that are in a pound of protein. If you burn the protein in a calorimeter it would yield over 5 Cals/gm. However, the body will only net the reported 4 Cals/gm due to an increase in energy expenditure during digestion.

In the body muscle tissue contains approximately 20-30% water. So if you were to add a pound of muscle tissue approximately 70-80% of that weight would be water so the wet weight of a lb of muscle would yield 360-450 Cals.

However, you can't just eat 360-450 kcals above maintenance and expect to increase you muscle mass by 1 lb as there is also an energy cost required for protein synthesis to occur. I don't know exactly what this is and even after reading some of the links above I am not really convinced anyone knows exactly what this is.

When you are talking about the Caloric requirements to either gain or lose weight it is commonly prescribed that you should eat approximately 500 Cals above or below your maintenance. This may seem confusing because a lb of muscle muscle and lb of fat fat have different energy contents. However, fat storage is a very energy efficient process requiring almost no energy and muscle protein synthesis requires a large amount of energy to occur. The exact difference between the 2 processes is probably more of an academic question then it has practical relevance. When trying to gain weight eating 500 Cals above your maintenance is most likely a pretty good guess and the exact amount would probably be within the margin of error of couting your Calories after you take into account the measurement error of what is reported on food labels, differences in portion sizes, estimations from Calorie calculators, etc.

[meander]

SumDumGoi, don't you think that a lb a week is too much? I mean, that amounts to 4 per month and 48 per year!

[SumDumGoi]

SumDumGoi, don't you think that a lb a week is too much? I mean, that amounts to 4 per month and 48 per year!

Do I expect anyone to be able to gain 1 lb of muscle per week? No. You would be doing well if you can gain 1-2 lbs in a month.

[meander]

Then this means that the surplus needs to be at 250 cals per week, right?

[jarringjarred]

It really is not a calorie thing so much as a protien timing thing.

One pound of muscle will come from eating or drinking at least one pound of protien. The protien is digested in the stomach and the amino acids enter the blood where they go into the torn muscle to repair it and it gets bigger.

Your kidneys filter the aminos out of your blood about every 4 hours or so. If you do not replace them with new protien your blood is basicaly just blood and no aminos so muscle building stops.

When you finish working out, the torn muscle will continue to soak up aminos and build itself up for about 4 days, so you need to keep replenishing the protein in your stromach about every 3 waking hours for those 4 days to make fast gains.

How long it takes to gain one pound of muscle and how much protein you must ingest will vary from person to person. Maybe 1 weeks worth of protien, maybe 1 months worth of protein. Everyone is different.

Back to the calorie question. 50 grams of protein from whey protein in water is less calories than the amount of eggs you would need to eat to get 50 grams of protein, but the muscle only sees the amino acids from the protien and doesnt really care how many calories are there.


A certain number of calories are needed to put yourself into an anabolic state though, but they can really come from whatever. The ratios of fat to carbs to protien are mainly for trying to stay lean vs just build muscle.

If you want to make fast muscle gains, work out hard and eat about 2 grams of protein per pound of body weight spread over 6 meals every day.

Hope that helps :-)

It would be nice if the process were that straight forward. Amino acids will not magically enter the sites of damage and repair them. The process involves a cascade of cellular signalling events that indicate sites of damage (muscle stress) that ultimately result in recruitment of machinery for repair or cell division. Repair of damaged tissue or generation of new tissue will eventually lead to muscular growth, but it is not a direct ratio between damage and growth. This doesn't even include the increase in other proteins required to support any changes in "muscle". This entire process is dependent on individual genetics and variable cellular environmental factors. This also disregards any larger scale homeostasis effects that are generated by a huge surge in calories and amino acids and the general body stress caused by exercise.

I'm not an expert on muscle growth, but I am doing my PhD studying Myosins (among other things), the motors used for muscular contraction. Its hard enough to understand the actual process of regulation of the production of individual proteins in the process let alone the entire process and the number of calories required.

Body building is an art, not a science (despite what product marketing may say).

[Rodrigobalilla]

So can somebody confirm if it is 600 calories in a pound of muscle or 2500 calories in a pound of muscle!! which is it guys!!

Thanks

[mynameisuntz]

From Lyle:

"Rather than 3,500 calories to break down a pound of fat, a pound of muscle provides about 600 calories to the body when it’s broken down for energy."

600 calories when it's broken down for energy. If you're trying to build it, however, that particular article didn't say.

[DeshNoFouk]

some one said it earlier, you have to see how many cal to consume and watch your body over time. there is really way to many variables.
ex 2000 cal just for a normal day. really low body fat ++ cal, lift/run a lot ++ ever more cal, and if you have a job that's not a desk job, add a little more. then add your own genetic make up. this is just to maintain a health body and have some gains, unless i read wrong and what i thought about cal burning was all completely wrong.

but to answer your question, i think its around 1700 like they said.

[AlwaysTryin]

some one said it earlier, you have to see how many cal to consume and watch your body over time. there is really way to many variables.
ex 2000 cal just for a normal day. really low body fat ++ cal, lift/run a lot ++ ever more cal, and if you have a job that's not a desk job, add a little more. then add your own genetic make up. this is just to maintain a health body and have some gains, unless i read wrong and what i thought about cal burning was all completely wrong.

but to answer your question, i think its around 1700 like they said.

Thanks for answering his question, however I'm sure he already moved on since the thread is 3 years old!

[KBaN]

Thanks for answering his question, however I'm sure he already moved on since the thread is 3 years old!

In a harvard study, the maximum amount of lean muscle subjects managed to gain naturally under ideal circumstances(NO STEROIDS) is 1 oz of muscle per day. This translates to about half a pound of muscle a week idealy. Anything above that is the fat you're gaining along with the water weight.

[sawoobley]

In a harvard study, the maximum amount of lean muscle subjects managed to gain naturally under ideal circumstances(NO STEROIDS) is 1 oz of muscle per day. This translates to about half a pound of muscle a week idealy. Anything above that is the fat you're gaining along with the water weight.

Link?

[JamesWestfall]

BUMP!!!

This is the way i read it, and i intent to try a bulk based on this (im a light 8-9% and want to gain 15lbs).......given you are doing everything possible to promote muscle growth and minimise fat; sensible macro ratios, etc:::::

I propose:

- 1700cal/ pound of muscle.
- Max lean muscle gain of .5 lbs/ week.

1700cal / 2 = 850cal
850cal / 7 days = 121cal per day above maintenance to gain .5 lbs per week.
.5 lbs per week x 4.333 = 2.1665 lbs per month
2.1665 x 12 = 25.998 lbs per year OR 11.8kg for others
25.998 LBS PER YEAR on 121 cal/day surplus.....

This to me, along with a good 40-40-20 or 40-30-30 diet, keeping it clean, etc would suggest that 121 cal above maintenance is all you would need to gain lean muscle with minimal fat........but again, its just guess work...

Still gotta be smashing the gym to see any gain anyway....

Anyone got any thoughts??????

[JamesWestfall]

Bumpin again coz i think this is interesting and wanna get the ball rolling on this again!!!!

[SwiftyX]

Good luck trying to track your food intake and energy expenditure down to 121 calories. That's not going to happen.

Don't take into acount that this formula (if correct) accounts for a gain of 100% muscle, which won't happen, don't take into account that gain potential diminishes over time, don't take into account that when you change weight your BMR changes with it. There is no static number that will get you 100% lean gains.

It's fun to theorize but it's all mental wanking that amounts to overthinking in reality.

[AdamWW]

The original (and very old) OP was asking about calorie consumption needs to actually synthesize muscle, not how many are contained inside it.

Because fat storage requires no actual stimulus to occur ( like muscle building does ), you cannot simply say that mucle is mainly protein, and protein has 4 calories per gram, so it needs such and such grams to grow - everybody synthesizes at different rates depending on the degree of muscle damage, hormones, genetics, and other factors. Thus, someone eating 300 cals above maintenance per day who trains really hard isgoing to gain more muscle than someone eating 300 above who just does 15 push ups a week.

If you take it too literally (the calorie part), youre going to be very disappointed. For instance, 1lb or 454g of chicken may have 80g of protein and say 600 calories, but that doesn't mean by eating 3lb of chicken (or 1800) calories you will GAIN everything you eat in muscle... Muscle growth takes WAY longer and is much more difficult than gaining fat - hell if it were that simple, there would be far more fit people walking around.

[alex2363]

nice thread even if old

[ljknapp]

You have to consume approximately 3,500 calories above and beyond your body's maintenance levels, to gain a pound of fat.

Does the same figure hold true for gaining a pound of muscle?

Jim

No, the NSCA says it takes about 2500 kcal (if it somehow was all directed to producing the muscle).