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Sure. I’ve got about 20lbs more muscle than I did at 30. I currently lift 3-4 times a week and run 3.5+ miles 5-6 times a week. At 30 I worked out or ran 3 days

by tw04 5y ago

Sure. I’ve got about 20lbs more muscle than I did at 30. I currently lift 3-4 times a week and run 3.5+ miles 5-6 times a week. At 30 I worked out or ran 3 days a week. I eat out less now and generally pay attention to what I eat vs just eating whatever is in front of me. Nearly identical meaning proportions are the same but I eat less junk food now. I was a college athlete, but there’s no way I carried the fitness forward ~6 years without maintaining my college level of workouts. I realize it’s all anecdotal, but based on my personal experience, the study is really tough to take at face value.

vidarh 5y ago
People tend to massively overestimate how much the extra muscle mass matters, and how much they burn during exercise, though, and it takes very little to overcompensate with a little extra food here and there. I lift too, and for many years I wrote down everything I wrote, and weighed myself every morning. I could tell very precisely how much I burnt, and it tended to shock people on lifting forums who were certain they needed to down lots protein shakes to get enough calories. At my peak lifting I wasn't huge, but I was around qualification levels for competitive powerlifting for my weight class at the time (I squatted about 200kg, benched 150kg), and exercised 5 days a week. I burned about 2000kcal/day on average. I tested that many times when bulking or slimming down by seeing how much I needed to increase it or drop it down. And it changed a little as I added muscle, but much less than you might think. I'd have people arguing with me on fitness forums that there was no way I was burning that little, and that I really needed 3000kcal/day or more, and then complain about why they were adding weight. People in a more active job would burn more than that, and people with a more active life outside of work and the gym as well, but people are notoriously bad at estimating their activity levels and apply calorie level assumptions that are often many decades out of date and based on far more labour intensive daily lives. Basically the only way you'll know is to track and measure.
- nradov 5y ago
  At rest, muscle only burns about 8 kcal/day/kg more than fat.
- Aerroon 5y ago
  I'm curious: how tall are you and/or roughly how much do you weight? Benching 150 kg with 2000 kcal/day absolutely does sound odd compared to recommendations. However, my personal experience also tells me that the regular recommendations might be a bit high.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    6'1/185cm. At the time my weight was around 93kg, so 150kg bench was nothing special for my size. When bulking I'd do about 2400kcal. For people pushing towards competitive levels it may well have made sense to go higher to allow exercising accordingly harder, but for me it was just to stay fit so I prioritised staying reasonably lean. Also worth mentioning that outside of lifting my life absolutely was/is very sedentary, so I did burn less than a lot of people. EDIT: One thing that will confuse people here is that style of exercise will matter a lot. To reach a 1RM of 150kg on bench meant most of the time I did bench 1-2 times a week for 5 sets of 5 reps of ca 120kg or so. My bench routine took 10-15 minutes. My whole lifting program took about 40m x 3 days/week. I added some cardio to that, but that is not a lot of physical activity. Someone who does bodybuilding on the other hand will typically do a lot more volume.
- CogitoCogito 5y ago
  Yeah whenever I’ve trained for marathons and I’ve not actively worked at keeping myself from eating too much more, I’ve gained weight during the training. Every single time. You do of course burn more calories than you would if you didn’t exercise but most people don’t realize how easily you can eat back those calories and more if you’re not careful.

by tw04 5y ago

vidarh 5y ago

People tend to massively overestimate how much the extra muscle mass matters, and how much they burn during exercise, though, and it takes very little to overcompensate with a little extra food here and there. I lift too, and for many years I wrote down everything I wrote, and weighed myself every morning. I could tell very precisely how much I burnt, and it tended to shock people on lifting forums who were certain they needed to down lots protein shakes to get enough calories. At my peak lifting I wasn't huge, but I was around qualification levels for competitive powerlifting for my weight class at the time (I squatted about 200kg, benched 150kg), and exercised 5 days a week. I burned about 2000kcal/day on average. I tested that many times when bulking or slimming down by seeing how much I needed to increase it or drop it down. And it changed a little as I added muscle, but much less than you might think. I'd have people arguing with me on fitness forums that there was no way I was burning that little, and that I really needed 3000kcal/day or more, and then complain about why they were adding weight. People in a more active job would burn more than that, and people with a more active life outside of work and the gym as well, but people are notoriously bad at estimating their activity levels and apply calorie level assumptions that are often many decades out of date and based on far more labour intensive daily lives. Basically the only way you'll know is to track and measure.

nradov 5y ago
At rest, muscle only burns about 8 kcal/day/kg more than fat.
Aerroon 5y ago
I'm curious: how tall are you and/or roughly how much do you weight? Benching 150 kg with 2000 kcal/day absolutely does sound odd compared to recommendations. However, my personal experience also tells me that the regular recommendations might be a bit high.
- vidarh 5y ago
  6'1/185cm. At the time my weight was around 93kg, so 150kg bench was nothing special for my size. When bulking I'd do about 2400kcal. For people pushing towards competitive levels it may well have made sense to go higher to allow exercising accordingly harder, but for me it was just to stay fit so I prioritised staying reasonably lean. Also worth mentioning that outside of lifting my life absolutely was/is very sedentary, so I did burn less than a lot of people. EDIT: One thing that will confuse people here is that style of exercise will matter a lot. To reach a 1RM of 150kg on bench meant most of the time I did bench 1-2 times a week for 5 sets of 5 reps of ca 120kg or so. My bench routine took 10-15 minutes. My whole lifting program took about 40m x 3 days/week. I added some cardio to that, but that is not a lot of physical activity. Someone who does bodybuilding on the other hand will typically do a lot more volume.
CogitoCogito 5y ago
Yeah whenever I’ve trained for marathons and I’ve not actively worked at keeping myself from eating too much more, I’ve gained weight during the training. Every single time. You do of course burn more calories than you would if you didn’t exercise but most people don’t realize how easily you can eat back those calories and more if you’re not careful.