Muscle does not weight more then fat

JulieSHelms wrote: »

Azdak wrote: »

So a newbie will feel stronger, firmer, and might experience a noticeable increase in muscle size. It is understandable that they might feel confused when told "you can't build muscle in a deficit", even though that is mostly accurate.

So for someone trying to lose weight (ie fat) is there value in strength training while still in a deficit or should it wait until they are done?

Yes, you protect the muscle you already have. When you lose weight, some of it is fat, some of it is other stuff, including muscle. Strength training while in a deficit helps keep that muscle loss to a minimum.

donjtomasco wrote: »

If you are lifting weights or doing 'muscle strengthening' exercises, the assumption would be that you are building muscle.

I am 5'10" and 202, down from 213. I need to be around 185. So are you saying that my every other day upper body weight training is not building ANY muscle while I am losing weight?

I am not arguing or disagreeing, I am trying to get an answer.

To carry that logic a bit further, if I am wanting to look like I looked before, which is tone with muscle, your logic says that I can't build muscle until I start eating more then my maintain weight, or when I am NOT in a deficit. Sorry, that just does not compute. Maybe someone can elaborate more on how this really is the case.

Why is it that I am already feeling muscle and some is already showing up? Is it just an illusion?

You could be building some muscle. Factors that go into whether you can build muscle at a deficit are (1) sex (men are more likely to than women; (2) age (young men are more likely to than older men); (3) how much of a deficit you have (much more likely with a 250 calorie/.5 lb goal deficit than with a 1000 calorie deficit/2 lb goal); (4) how much fat you have to lose (if you have a lot to lose its easier); (5) how trained you are (if you are untrained vs. have been training for a while you are more likely to build muscle (called newbie gains); and (6) whether you were trained in the past (easy to regain muscle you used to have than start from scratch). I think these are the main factors.

What you have to realize is that even under the best conditions muscle gain is slow and has to be fueled either by a surplus or burned fat. Therefore when you lose and build at the same time we are talking far less muscle, by weight, than you can lose of fat in a week. Therefore, you do not -- as some claim -- eat at a deficit and gain weight because muscle weighs more than fat. That would only happen if you could be losing a particular volume of fat and gaining the same volume of muscle in the same week, and that just doesn't happen. It makes no logical sense. Might you lose 20 lb of fat and put on maybe 2 lb of muscle over the same extended period of time, if conditions are right (or something like that, I don't know enough to know what numbers are realistic)? Sure. But there's never a reason to say that someone isn't losing because "muscle weights more than fat" (although of course it does, as volume is implied, absolutely no one thinks a lb can be more than a lb -- how would that show up on the scale?). :-)

As for the specific things you mention (and some other things commonly mentioned):

You can gain strength without putting on muscle. Muscle basically gets better at doing what it does as you train.

When you lose fat you see muscle that was not previously visible. This can make a huge difference, as I saw for myself. I know I lost muscle overall while losing, but when I made it to 125 (from over 200) I had the appearance of lots of muscle I did not appear to have before.

Training can make muscle retain water and look more prominent.

Not saying you didn't put on some muscle, but these are usually more significant explanations for why people think they put on a lot of muscle.

By the logic behind the argument that "muscle does not weigh more than fat because one pound of muscles weighs the same as one pound of fat," nothing weighs more than anything. An elephant doesn't weigh more than a mouse, because one pound of elephant weigh the same as one pound of mouse (or mice, I guess, unless we're talking about a rodent of unusual size). I don't weigh any more now than I did in high school, because one pound of me now weighs the same as one pound of me in high school. Yeah! I weigh the same as I did in high school! I guess I can stop watching my weight!

To those who insist that muscle does not weigh more than fat because one LB of muscle is the same as one LB of fat (ignoring that volume is implied in the statement), I am truly curious:

Do you really think that other people are confused about whether one LB of something weighs the same as one LB of something else? When people say (incorrectly, obviously) that someone dieting for a few weeks and adding in some exercise might not have lost because muscle weighs more than fat, do you imagine that they think that 1 LB of muscle shows up as 2 LB on the scale or something?

Because it would never cross my mind that anyone could think something so weird. It's kind of insulting, really.

(Of course, the misunderstanding implicit in "don't worry, muscle weighs more than fat" is equally offbase, but probably less obviously so to most. It's the idea that if you lost a particular volume of fat you are likely to have gained a similar volume of muscle, and of course that's not so -- to gain that much muscle volume in the time involved would be extremely difficult--impossible, in fact--in most cases we are talking about.)

This is such a silly argument.

On the question of whether strength training is worthwhile in a deficit, here's another perspective: my recent experience which convinced me you can gain strength in a deficit is all based on a knee injury I got in March. Since then I've been favouring that knee, avoiding stairs etc and as a result both knees have become weak and temperamental and prone to soreness. As the injured knee ought to be fixed by now (it was only a bruise on the bone) I decided to try doing step-ups to strengthen it.

After a few weeks of doing between 10 and 20 minutes of step ups three times a week, the improvement in knee function on both sides was completely amazing. I went from hobbling up any kind of incline to bouncing up stairs, climbing hills, even voluntarily running for brief periods (I'm still a bit heavy for that to be comfortable though).

My point is that under-toned muscles cause all sorts of problems with joint function that we are not aware of, and keeping your muscles toned has incredible benefits for your overall mobility.