Muscle weighs more than fat

dmaster555

1 pound of fat weighs the same as 1 pound of muscle. Stop using muscle as an excuse for not seeing the scale change. If you're eating low calories and doing only cardio, you aren't gaining muscle mass. You need to fix your diet.

Stop spreading wrong information. Ignorance leads to weight gain.

seemichellerun

Word.

snowflakelaia

totally agreed

allegedglobalconspiracy

LOL Respect. I get furious with that erroneous comment also. Body re-compositioning is cool, but cardio alone won't get you there. Got to hit the weights for that.

vim_n_vigor

Your are correct that one pound of each both weigh one pound. One pound of muscle does not take up as much space on your body as fat does, so if your measurements are changing, and your weight is not, you are replacing fat with muscle. In the long run, getting that muscle to replace the fat will raise your metabolism and increase fat burning capabilities in your body.

Dmonique85

A woman weighing 150 pounds with 19% fat will look much smaller (and be much healthier) than a woman at 150 pounds with 35% fat. They weigh the same, yet the composition is different. Because muscle is more dense than fat the person with less fat and more muscle will look smaller.

Stop being so obsessed with body weight and start paying attention to body composition. How much body fat do you have compared to muscle? Simply seeing how much you weigh isn't very helpful.

(from: http://www.onemorebite-weightloss.com/muscle-to-fat.html)

12by311

Muscle does weigh more than fat.....by volume.


But for real, I get your frustration.

meggonkgonk

1 pound of fat weighs the same as 1 pound of muscle. Stop using muscle as an excuse for not seeing the scale change. If you're eating low calories and doing only cardio, you aren't gaining muscle mass. You need to fix your diet.

Stop spreading wrong information. Ignorance leads to weight gain.

It's a misnomer. They mean more dense. Get a life.

MooseWizard

*edit: point made while I was typing. Deleting redundant reply.*

ashleynicoleb

A woman weighing 150 pounds with 19% fat will look much smaller (and be much healthier) than a woman at 150 pounds with 35% fat. They weigh the same, yet the composition is different. Because muscle is more dense than fat the person with less fat and more muscle will look smaller.

Stop being so obsessed with body weight and start paying attention to body composition. How much body fat do you have compared to muscle? Simply seeing how much you weigh isn't very helpful.

(from: http://www.onemorebite-weightloss.com/muscle-to-fat.html)

Ditto

hroush

You will not gain 2 lbs of muscle in a week, especially if your mostly doing cardio exercises. The most I've heard from a guy on here trying to build muscle is 3/4 lb per week.

kristanickerson

1 pound of fat weighs the same as 1 pound of muscle. Stop using muscle as an excuse for not seeing the scale change. If you're eating low calories and doing only cardio, you aren't gaining muscle mass. You need to fix your diet.

Stop spreading wrong information. Ignorance leads to weight gain.

I guess better wording would be 1 pound of fat is not the same SIZE as 1 pound of muscle

iplayoutside19

You cannot gain muscle in a calorie deficit, either.

bobball

agreed, BUT people should not just use a scale to measure progress and use a BF % check every couple weeks to see their progress.
For instance over the last 6 weeks I've only lost 3 pounds, but have gone down 2 pant sizes and gained size in my legs and upper body.

Jessica_Lo

Oh my...that is my pet peeve on here as well as the starvation mode thing.

I want to scream when someone posts...I've been working out for a week and no weight loss, somethings wrong.....then someone tells them it's muscle. In a week???? REALLY?

freerange

Actually I don’t think anyone is saying a pound of muscle weighs more than a pound of fat. I think what most people mean is a pound of muscle is smaller than a pound of fat. So indeed if you lose a pound of fat and gain a pound of muscle you will weigh the same, but be smaller.

beckajw

1 pound of muscle doesn't weigh more than 1 pound of fat, but 1 cubic inch of muscle does weigh more than 1 cubic inch of fat. Therefore, if you are building muscle, you may not see a decrease on the scale, but will see a decrease in inches. Cardio, although it doesn't "build" muscle, it does help to tone and tighten. You can see a loss of inches, but no weight loss doing only cardio. The cause of that is that you have burned fat while "building" some muscle.

rileysowner

While muscle weighs the same as fat, that is not the point of those who say muscle weighs more than fat. Their point is that muscle is more dense than fat, thus if you are gaining muscle while losing fat your weight will not change but you will get thinner. While their terminology is wrong, their underlying thought process is correct. It is more a matter of a lack of comprehension of the differences in the meaning of mass, volume and density. Blame the school system for not teaching it well.

As to whether a person is gaining muscle or not, that is a completely different question. Someone who is very sedentary and starts exercising regularly will eventually put on muscle as their body needs it, but in the short term it is more likely the muscles are holding extra water so they can hold extra glycogen. That will easily keep overall weigh from going down while measurements continue to decrease. Or there is the DOMS effect that also causes extra water to be held by the muscles.

Rubie81

How can I check my BF percentage?

elcyclista

1 pound of fat weighs the same as 1 pound of muscle.

Yes but one cubic centimeter of fat weighs less than one cubic centimeter of muscle.

Stop using muscle as an excuse for not seeing the scale change. If you're eating low calories and doing only cardio, you aren't gaining muscle mass. You need to fix your diet.

True, if you're eating too little calories and only doing card, you can't build muscle.

You need a surplus in calories in order to build.

Dmonique85

And also cardio is good for fat loss, and some people are naturally muscular. I don't do much heavy weight lifting because I have wrist problems & my body type builds muscle incredibly quickly & I don't want to look scary (I have done it before). Everyone is different, and some people have different goals for their weight loss & shape than others. Some people just want to wear smaller clothes, to have better sex, not to run a marathon (I do want to run a marathon btw). Right now I walk/jog & use resistance bands & a do tiny bit of weight training and the weight is falling off! To each his/her own.

rileysowner

You cannot gain muscle in a calorie deficit, either.

Yes you can. It is just difficult. An completely untrained body can do amazing things when it is exercised, thus using bodybuilders as an example falls down because they are very trained. The reason they need such a huge caloric surplus is 1) They want to pack on as much muscle as they can that is the whole purpose of what they do. 2) They are already trained and trying to add more muscle. Neither of those is true for a couch potato whose largest energy expenditure in the day was getting up to get another chocolate bar or bag of chips. Provide a good level of protein and exercise and some muscle will be built. Not the slabs of muscle bodybuilders put on, and not the muscle a person could put on in a caloric surplus, but I know for myself in the past year I put on muscle for the first six months while losing fat. Once I was at a fairly fit level the muscle gains stopped, but coming from only exerting myself to fill up my plate from the all you can eat buffet one more time, the exercise I did was a complete change and the effect on my muscle mass was to increase it. Of course that was not pure cardio but a mixture of cardio and strength training.