I’ve found a lot of conflicting information on the internet, and I’d like a more informed opinion on the matter. If I gain, say, 5 Kg of muscle (11 pounds), will my resting metabolic rate go significantly up?
The reason I’m asking is because right now I’d like to gain some serious weight (I’m 180 cm, 73 Kg; 5’11’', 161 pounds), but I don’t like to eat more than twice a day. I realized that in order to trigger conspicuous weight gain I certainly have to eat more often than this (cramming more calories into these two meals is not feasible for me). If I go through the hell that eating something like 4 times a day is for me, I’d like to know if, long term, I could revert to my two big meals without losing everything I’ve worked for.
Bottom line: Will I need significantly more calories to maintain a bodyweight of, say, 80 Kg (176 pounds), vs 73 Kg (161 pounds), at the same BF%? Are you able to quantify the extra energy requirement? Thanks.
Depends what you mean by significantly. Typically, we ascribe ~10kCal/hr/kg of muscle so…50 kCal more per day is statistically significant and may be clinically meaningful, though you’re likely going to gain more 6- or so to gain 5kg of muscle.
Hi, i think you can use myfitnesspal to run various scenarios (body weight of 73kg versus 80kg) and it will give you calorie targets.
then for a period of time you’d need to track what you eat now to understand your current baseline.
the difference between the two is an estimate of how much more you’d have to eat on a regular basis. it might be as simple for you as adding a daily pint of whole milk with a scoop of protein powder or an extra daily pb&j sandwich.
The 10kCal/kg per hour number comes from muscle working at ~10 METs. If you added 5kg of muscle, you’d likely add ~50 kCal to your TDEE via physical activity if you worked out hard for an hour. The rest of the day- or on days you don’t train- a kilo of muscle is worth ~30-50kCal per day at rest, though this varies, or 150-250kCal/day more(potentially).
I should have clarified this and multiplied correctly.
The other thing here that’s important to note is 5kg of muscle gain is likely to take ~6 months.
