How Many Calories Does A Pound Of Muscle Burn?

You’ve probably heard that muscle burns more calories at rest than fat. That’s true. Pound for pound, muscle tissue burns roughly 3 times more calories than fat tissue.

You’ve also probably heard that building more muscle boosts your metabolism. Technically, that’s true too. More muscle means a slightly higher resting calorie burn – even while you’re sleeping or sitting on the couch.

But here’s where the myth starts.

Some fitness “experts” claim that every pound of muscle you gain burns 50 extra calories per day. That number gets repeated constantly in gyms, on social media, and even in magazines.

It’s not true.

And the real number is far lower than most people think.

How Many Calories Does A Pound Of Muscle Burn Per Day?

Muscle is metabolically active tissue. It does burn more calories than fat, and increasing muscle mass can slightly raise your resting metabolic rate.

But when you look at the actual scientific numbers, it’s far less exciting than most people expect.

A pound of muscle burns roughly 6 to 10 calories per day at rest. That estimate comes from research on energy expenditure of individual body tissues and organs, as well as basal metabolic rate (BMR) calculations.

I’ll explain where that number comes from in a moment. But first, think about what the 50-calorie claim would mean if it were true.

If one pound of muscle burned 50 calories per day, then gaining 10 pounds of muscle – something achievable for many men over time, and even possible for women – would increase daily calorie burn by 500 calories.

Since there are about 3,500 calories in a pound of fat, you’d theoretically lose an extra pound of fat every 7 days without changing your diet or activity level.

You could sit at your desk and get leaner by the week. Or you could eat an extra 500 calories per day and maintain your weight with no fat gain.

That would be amazing.

But it’s not reality.

Building additional muscle does increase total daily energy expenditure slightly, but not enough to create dramatic fat loss on its own. The only exception is people who gain very large amounts of muscle mass – typically male bodybuilders and strength athletes – and even then, it takes years.

Origins Of The Metabolism Myth: 1 Pound Of Muscle Burns 50 Calories

So where did the 50-calorie claim actually come from? Who first said that a pound of muscle burns 50 calories per day?

It’s hard to trace the exact origin of this muscle metabolism myth. It may have stemmed from an old scientific estimate that was misinterpreted or exaggerated over time, but I couldn’t find a credible study supporting the 50-calorie figure.

What I do know is that many coaches and bodybuilding experts have promoted the idea that building muscle boosts metabolism. And to be fair, increasing muscle mass does increase calorie burn slightly. I’ve written that myself in the past.

The question isn’t whether muscle increases metabolism – it does. The real question is how much.

Building muscle raises metabolic rate, but nowhere near the dramatic levels often claimed. That’s why this myth about muscle burning 50 calories per pound needs clarification with real evidence and realistic expectations.

And this idea hasn’t just circulated in bodybuilding magazines and gyms, the mainstream weight loss industry has repeated it too.

Dr. Oz was quoted in Oprah Magazine as saying, “Muscle burns about 50 times more calories than fat.” Perhaps he meant 50 calories per pound, but either way the statement is inaccurate. Muscle burns roughly three times as many calories as fat, not 50 calories per pound.

In his book 8 Minutes In The Morning, fitness author Jorge Cruise claimed his program would help you “build 5 pounds of lean muscle within the first few weeks, allowing your body to burn an extra 250 calories per day.” Do the math and you can see how the 50-calories-per-pound myth keeps resurfacing.

In other cases, the number gets inflated even further. Some claims suggest 100 calories per pound of muscle. In Power of 10: The Once A Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution, Adam Zickerman wrote, “Adding three pounds of lean muscle burns about 10,000 extra calories a month.”

That calculation doesn’t hold up either. The real number would be closer to 540 additional calories per month.

This is one of those persistent fitness myths that has been repeated so often it became accepted as fact – without fact-checking. And even today, the exaggerated claim that muscle dramatically increases metabolism continues to circulate.

Does Building Muscle Really Boost Your Metabolism? The Science of BMR Explained

What do the facts say about muscle and metabolism?

Yes building muscle boosts your metabolism, but it doesn’t boost your basal resting metabolic rate by very much. Above, I mentioned the actual figure is about 6 to 10 calories. Below are the scientific sources where these numbers came from.

But first, a quick recap on metabolism. Your total daily energy expenditure (total daily metabolism) consists of 4 components:

1. Resting metabolic rate (energy burned at rest just to maintain normal body functions)
2. Thermic effect of feeding (calories burned to digest food)
3. Thermic effect of exercise (formal workouts)
4. Non exercise Activity thermogenesis /NEAT (all other physical activity all day long)

Basal metabolic rate (BMR) usually accounts for most of the total daily energy expenditure at 60% to 75%, except for highly active people.

An interesting fact that many people don’t realize is that your internal organs use far more energy than your muscles do at rest. Skeletal muscle makes up about 40% of your body weight. Your most metabolically active organs only account for about 5% to 6% of your body weight.

A study called “Dissecting the energy needs of the body” confirms:

“The majority of the resting energy expenditure can be explained by the energy needs of a few highly metabolic organs, making up a small percentage of the body by weight.”

Another little-known fact is that fat tissue is not totally inert. Fat cells are like glands where several endocrine factors, cytokines, and chemicals that regulate physiologic processes and immune function are released, so there is some metabolic activity going on there.

Adipose tissue has the lowest energy cost of all the body’s tissues, but it does burn about 2 calories per day per pound.

What Is The Metabolic Rate Of Muscle Tissue?

One of the early mentions of the metabolic rate of human organs and tissues was made in a textbook called Energy metabolism (Elia). These were the energy (calorie) expenditures reported in the text by calories per pound of body weight per day:

Heart 200
Kidneys: 200
Brain: 109
Liver: 91
Skeletal muscle: 6
Adipose tissue: 2

A study by Gallagher and colleagues estimated that the metabolic cost of a pound of muscle is 55 kilojoules/kg, which is 13 calories per kg of body weight or 5.9 calories. The same study suggested that the value in kilojoules for fat was 4.5 (2 calories), 441 for kidneys (200 calories), 441 for the heart (200 calories), and 200 for the liver (91 calories).

In 2011 a study was published in the American Journal of Human Biology, titled, Evaluation of Specific Metabolic Rates of Major Organs and Tissues: Comparison Between Men and Women. This study not only validated these numbers, but also confirmed that they applied to both adult men and women.

Women on average carry more fat mass and less skeletal muscle mass, but the energy cost per pound of each is the same. There may also some variation based on age (children and elderly adults) and on body composition (normal weight or overweight), but these numbers appear generally valid.

That’s three scientific sources coming to the same conclusion: The metabolic cost of muscle is about 6 calories per pound per day.

Another method some people have suggested for estimating the energy cost of added muscle is to simply plug your stats into a calorie (metabolism) equation that includes lean body mass in the calculation. The Katch-McArdle formula is one of the more well known calculators.

When I compared my current BMR to predicted future BMR after gaining various amounts of lean body mass, it came out just under 10 calories per pound (9.7 to be exact).

While this calculation is for total lean body mass, not skeletal muscle mass, we are assuming that we are going to gain skeletal muscle through resistance training and the organs are not going to be growing during adulthood, so this seems a reasonable method of estimation.

Between these sources, that gives us a range of 6 to 10 calories per pound, and 6 calories is the more frequently cited figure because there’s more than one source confirming it. Although there’s probably individual variation, I can’t find any evidence that we burn more than 10 calories per pound of muscle per day.

What Does This Mean For Building Muscle And Boosting Metabolism?

If you were to cut a few pounds of body fat and gain a few pounds of muscle, that would be enough to see an improvement in your physique visually. Would the gain in muscle increase your resting metabolic rate? Yes, but by so little that it wouldn’t be meaningful to your future fat loss or how much you could eat.

This is in no way suggesting that it’s not worthwhile to do resistance training or make efforts to build muscle when your goal is fat loss. In addition to the cosmetic or visual aesthetics improvements, resistance training and building muscle makes you stronger, more functional, more athletic, healthier and is probably the single best thing you can do for anti-aging and wellness as you get older (builds bone density too).

If your goal is fat loss, shouldn’t you focus more on cardio than weights (no, and here’s why)

And don’t forget, if you are dieting in a deficit for fat loss, resistance training is imperative to ensure that the weight you lose comes from fat. If you go on a calorie restricted diet without resistance training, your risk of muscle loss is much higher.

Also, when you lift, that does burn calories. Resistance training doesn’t burn as much as steady cardio at moderate or higher intensities, but it can still be a significant part of your total daily energy expenditure (metabolism).

In addition, there is a metabolic cost when your muscles are recovering and repairing themselves after intense workouts. Synthesizing new muscle is also metabolically costly, which is why you need a calorie surplus to build muscle at an optimal rate. Technically then, how many calories does a pound of muscle burn is more than 6 if you count the metabolic impact of regular resistance training.

Whatever you do, don’t skip the weights, simply don’t expect building a small amount of muscle to boost your metabolism much or help you burn fat while you’re resting to any large degree. You would have to gain a huge amount of muscle to raise your metabolic rate enough that it would help you increase fat loss.

A Real World Example: How Much Can Building Muscle Boost Your Metabolism?

Before I started lifting at age 13, I think I weighed about 155. Flabby too – I was “Skinny fat.”

Although I’ve seen my body weight top 200 pounds at times, that was always at the end of a bulk, so I know a portion of it was fat. But it’s probably fair to say that I’ve gained at least 35 pounds of fat-free skeletal muscle over my bodybuilding career.

If the calories per pound of muscle burned is 6, then that means I really did increase my resting metabolism by 210 calories per day. That’s significant. But not massively so, and it took years to build that much muscle naturally.

Most people, except bodybuilders who are pursuing their maximum genetical potential for muscle gains, will never build that much.

I know there are exceptions in strength and physique sports, but most women wouldn’t even want that much extra body mass, lean or not, even if they could gain it. Muscle gains in women also come even slower than in men.

The Bottom Line On Gaining Muscle To Boost Metabolism And Lose Fat

Resistance training is one of the best things you will ever do for your body, your health and your performance. However, for most people, gaining muscle is not a useful strategy to increase resting metabolism.

The trouble is that when most people think of increasing metabolism they are looking for hacks like thermogenic hot peppers, green tea, fat burners, and other weird stuff like cold exposure that makes almost no difference. Many people look at building muscle as another hack to “increase metabolism while you sleep.”

Note: Eating more protein is a legitimate method to slightly boost metabolism (higher thermic effect of food).

Remember those four components of total energy expenditure I listed above? What almost everyone forgets is that two of them include exercise activity (formal workouts) and non exercise activity (NEAT). If you want an instant way to increase your metabolism, why not exercise more?

That includes lifting weights, and it also includes cardio and every bit of physical activity you accumulate during the day, even little stuff like walking around the house.

Every step you take and every move you make is expending more energy, aka “increasing metabolism.” But people usually don’t think of exercise this way – as “increasing metabolism.” Yet that’s exactly what exercise does.

Granted, exercise is not a permanent boost in metabolism, and it’s not boosting your resting metabolic rate. But it is a metabolism booster that you have control over, and all kinds of exercise counts: Lifting, cardio, walking, and any other physical activity.

I suggest you lift weights with enthusiasm for all the incredible fitness, health and well-being benefits it offers, but focus on increasing daily activity as a way to burn more first. Look at adding more muscle on your frame as just a little extra bonus.

Well, now you know the answer to “how many calories does a pound of muscle burn?” and you know the truth about the muscle burns fat myth. I hope you found this helpful. If you have any questions, post in the comments below.

Tom Venuto,
Author of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle – The Bible Of Fat Loss
Founder, Burn the Fat Inner Circle
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PS. See More Muscle And Metabolism Myths Here

About Tom Venuto
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilding and fat loss coach with 35 years of experience. He holds a degree in exercise science and has trained hundreds of clients in person and thousands online. He is also a recipe creator specializing in fat-burning, muscle-building cooking.

A former competitive bodybuilder, Tom is now a full-time evidence-based fitness writer, blogger, and author. His classic book Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is an international bestseller, first as an ebook and later as a hardcover and audiobook. He is also the author of Meal Prep For Fat Loss, a practical guide to smart shopping, batch cooking, and kitchen strategies that make healthy eating simple and sustainable.

Tom’s work has been featured in Men’s Fitness, Oprah Magazine and dozens of other major publications. He is best known for his no-BS, scientific approach to natural fat loss and muscle-building.

Tom is also the founder of Burn the Fat Inner Circle, a fitness support community with more than 59,000 members worldwide since 2006.

Scientific References

Elia M. Organ and tissue contribution to metabolic rate. In: Kinney JM, Tucker HN, editors. Energy Metabolism: Tissue Determinants and Cellular Corollaries. Raven Press; New York, 61-80, 1992.

Gallagher, et al, Organ-tissue mass measurement allows modeling of REE and metabolically active tissue mass, Am J Physiol, 275(2): E249-258 1998

Katch, F.I., McArdle, W.D., Nutrition, Weight Control, and Exercise. Lea & Febiger: Philadelphia. PA, 1983.

McClave S, et al, Dissecting the energy needs of the body, Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care, 4(2):143-7, 2001.

Wang Z et al, Evaluation of Specific Metabolic Rates of Major Organs and Tissues: Comparison Between Men and Women, Am J Hum Biol, 23(3): 333- 338, 2011.