this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2024
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Showerthoughts
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A pound of muscle requires many calories to maintain, more than anything else in your body, by weight.
Aside from fat. Or the brain. Or other organs
No, muscles require the most energy to maintain. Literally at rest, muscle is burning more than any other.
That's why the body sheds muscle readily if they aren't used, and why building muscle is so effective for general weight loss.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2980962/
Heart & kidneys > brain > liver > skeletal muscle > adipose muscle
Pound for pound. But they all are efficient, which still goes against the original thesis
Due to not wanting to move the goalposts, I'll cede regarding organs.
That said, I meant vs fat. I should have clarified. One does does does not build or shed more organs, so I thought that was clear, but I see I was not
Also said, I've seen the brain one contested quite a bit.
Again I cede to your source and acknowledge it, only clarifying I was comparing to non organ tissue.
Edit my meaning was a pound of fat, at rest, burns less and contributes less to TDEE than a point of muscle. Therefore muscle is less efficient, using more calories to continue existing per unit time.
Fair enough. And I'll give you the vs fat part. It was unfair for me to say anyway - what was in my head when I said it was that a pound of fat is considered worth 3500 kcal, which is more energy than most things in a body. It was a shit argument that mixed points.
Overall, I think my issue is just with the simple statement that "muscles are inefficient".
The way I interpreted that statement is that "muscles waste energy", since that's all the context I could get from those words. I see muscles as super efficient, just like anything else in the body in that they do as little as possible compared to what is demanded. I view that type of laziness as ultimate efficiency.
Through the rest of the thread I got little additional context, so I kept on keeping on.
I still think the op of this thread didn't get his point across very well
Yeah it's a funny thing.
Efficiency has multiple meanings for a living body, and a goal. (Is the goal to survive, is the goal to be strong, etc)
Cheers bud
The body also sheds brain cells if you don’t get enough exercise.
Here is a starting point to read on this topic:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/weight-loss/in-depth/metabolism/art-20046508
Edit and a slightly more editorial article
https://www.webmd.com/obesity/features/8-ways-to-burn-calories-and-fight-fat
Edit here is one that focuses on metrics of measurement, such as TDEE
https://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/metabolismcontroversy.html