How many calories does it take to maintain a pound of muscle compared to a pound of fat? I have looked around for good facts on this but have had mixed results so far. Here is my take.
Conventional wisdom says that if you take a pound of your fat and a pound of your muscle it takes a lot more calories for your body to maintain the muscle.
The pound of muscle will take about 50 calories to maintain for a day while the pound of fat will take about 2 calories to maintain per day.
One thing that is important to remember about this stat is that when you have a workout your body may swell up a bit but the muscle grows over the next 48 hours as your body heals.
When you gain a pound of fat it takes nothing to keep that fat in place.
The best way to look at the maintaining muscle versus fat is this;
if you look into the future and see yourself in a years time with an extra 20 pounds of muscle, which is easily possible, you know that you will have to have a clean diet with a lot of nutrients to keep this muscle in place.
If your were to gain 20 pounds of fat in the next year, of course quite possible as well, you will have to keep your exercise down and keep a bad diet to attain that fat gain.
The choice every day is yours, do you want a better body with 20 pounds more muscle or a worse body with 20 pounds more fat.
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