'Muscle weighs more than fat' ???

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Replies

  • diannethegeek
    diannethegeek Posts: 14,776 Member
    Can we all just agree that it's a moot point aboit semantics and get back to arguing about whether or not you can put on muscle in a deficit? Because that's really the more important point when people use this phrase.

    Also, muscle can't take up less space because an inch is an inch. So can we stop using that as a rebuttal too?
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    diannethegeek wrote: »
    Can we all just agree that it's a moot point aboit semantics and get back to arguing about whether or not you can put on muscle in a deficit? Because that's really the more important point when people use this phrase.

    Also, muscle can't take up less space because an inch is an inch. So can we stop using that as a rebuttal too?

    +1
  • queenliz99
    queenliz99 Posts: 15,317 Member
    diannethegeek wrote: »
    Can we all just agree that it's a moot point aboit semantics and get back to arguing about whether or not you can put on muscle in a deficit? Because that's really the more important point when people use this phrase.

    Also, muscle can't take up less space because an inch is an inch. So can we stop using that as a rebuttal too?

    This
  • apratsunrthd
    apratsunrthd Posts: 23 Member
    Yes, folks. You too can come spew the same thing we've heard 100 times already. What a circlejerk.
  • 47Jacqueline
    47Jacqueline Posts: 6,993 Member
    "'Know-it-all' amateurs reply by saying...
    "Yes but.... muscle weighs more than fat by volume"

    Technically true, but since when are humans measured in terms of 'weight-by-volume'?"

    So tired of this. It is not basically or even technically true.

    Fat takes up more space than volume, but never, not in a million years, does one pound of something weigh more than one pound of something else.
  • jenny24012014
    jenny24012014 Posts: 83 Member
    This is the most pedantic stupid argument in the world.
  • 999tigger
    999tigger Posts: 5,235 Member
    47Jacqueline wrote: »
    "'Know-it-all' amateurs reply by saying...
    "Yes but.... muscle weighs more than fat by volume"

    Technically true, but since when are humans measured in terms of 'weight-by-volume'?"

    So tired of this. It is not basically or even technically true.

    Fat takes up more space than volume, but never, not in a million years, does one pound of something weigh more than one pound of something else.

    I thought that was his/her point and most people fully understand this already. Occasionally someone posts the fat weighs more than muscle, but they are corrected on whatever thread it is. Btw the OP talks about it youd think he was the only one who knew this.
  • tigersword
    tigersword Posts: 8,059 Member
    lemurcat12 wrote: »

    In any case, I would love for someone to identify a person who has ever thought that a lb of muscle weights more than a lb of fat, because absent that happening I don't believe that anyone in the world is that dumb. (And I believe there are a lot of dumb people.)

    In fact, I kind of think that anyone who makes that "correction" is coming across as sort of dumb, just to think that others might be confused about such an obvious thing.
    Believe it or not, there was a poster on here in the past that argued (for pages) that a 10 pound ream of paper weighed more than a 10 pound dumbbell.

    As for the original post. Love the absolute lack of logic. Let's put it a different way. One pound of elephant weighs exactly the same as one pound of me, so an elephant doesn't weigh more than me... Of course weight is a comparison of density and volume, to say that muscle doesn't weigh more than fat because 1 pound equals 1 pound means that nothing can ever weigh more than anything else, because a pound of anything equals a pound of anything else.

    It's a silly, pointless, semantic argument that doesn't do anything but make the people arguing about it look silly.
  • nutmegoreo
    nutmegoreo Posts: 15,532 Member
    Well I hope that has solved this problem for everyone.

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  • TimothyFish
    TimothyFish Posts: 4,925 Member
    You can't really say that something weighs more than something else if you don't specify the size of what you're weighing. When people say muscle weighs more than fat, they mean that muscle in the size and shape of a particular human weighs more than fat forming that same size and shape.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
    rabbitjb wrote: »
    For muscle weighs more than fat the "by volume" is implied

    Stop being a pedant


    Amen. Shouldn't have opened this thread, it's just a waste of time.
  • Cherimoose
    Cherimoose Posts: 5,208 Member
    diannethegeek wrote: »
    Can we all just agree that it's a moot point aboit semantics and get back to arguing about whether or not you can put on muscle in a deficit? Because that's really the more important point when people use this phrase.

    Yes, the phrase is often used when someone really means, "the muscle weight you gain offsets any fat weight you lose".
    I won't rehash the old argument about whether you can gain muscle fiber size in a deficit, but it's well-known that increasing exercise can increase fluid retention within muscles during the repair process, and also through increased glycogen storage. Almost every day someone on these forums asks why they gained weight when all they changed was their exercise level.

    I'm posting this as a professionally qualified internet forum poster.


  • seabee78
    seabee78 Posts: 126 Member
    Think of it this way: A lb of lead would be like, maybe, the size of a hockey puck. A lb of Corn Flakes would be like the double-jumbo family size at Costco. A very muscular person would be smaller yet heavier than a fluffy, fat person.
  • Carlos_421
    Carlos_421 Posts: 5,132 Member
    So muscle doesn't weigh more than fat because 1 lb of fat weighs the same as 1 lb of muscle? Wow...so I guess steel doesn't weigh more than foam peanuts since 1 lb of steel weighs the same as 1 lb of peanuts.

    Oh? It's just more dense? Same difference. The idea of something being heavier than something else naturally bears out in the mind of all logical people that it is only heavier "by volume." It's automatically implied and understood.

    These kinds of symantecs are as useless as they are annoying.

    The reason we continue to encourage people that muscle weighs more than fat (and it does, for crying out loud) is because people sometimes notice that their clothes are getting looser but the scale hasn't changed. The reason for this is because they are exercising and gaining muscle at about the same rate they are losing fat (totally possible and common with newbie gains). So when they gain 1lb of muscle but lose 1lb of fat they weigh the same but don't take up as much space (because they're denser now, taking up less volume).
  • tigersword
    tigersword Posts: 8,059 Member
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    So muscle doesn't weigh more than fat because 1 lb of fat weighs the same as 1 lb of muscle? Wow...so I guess steel doesn't weigh more than foam peanuts since 1 lb of steel weighs the same as 1 lb of peanuts.

    Oh? It's just more dense? Same difference. The idea of something being heavier than something else naturally bears out in the mind of all logical people that it is only heavier "by volume." It's automatically implied and understood.

    These kinds of symantecs are as useless as they are annoying.

    The reason we continue to encourage people that muscle weighs more than fat (and it does, for crying out loud) is because people sometimes notice that their clothes are getting looser but the scale hasn't changed. The reason for this is because they are exercising and gaining muscle at about the same rate they are losing fat (totally possible and common with newbie gains). So when they gain 1lb of muscle but lose 1lb of fat they weigh the same but don't take up as much space (because they're denser now, taking up less volume).

    It really isn't at all possible to gain muscle at the same rate as fat loss. The scale doesn't move for those people because of water retention.
  • Fizz500d
    Fizz500d Posts: 9 Member
    “By Volume” is not always implied and understood by people using this in discussion. I’ve had a few people straight out say “yes but muscle weighs more than fat” period and had to use the 1tonne of lead is the same as 1tonne of feathers, it just means you’ll need a heck of a lot more feathers than lead to get to the weight analogy.
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