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Comment by gd1 | Hacker News Reader

You do your math. Exercise isn't just about how many calories you burn during it. Add a kilo of muscle and it will be burning energy 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

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You urged to do your math, but didn't present any of yours.

Muscle burns an inconsequential amount of energy -- 6-10 per pound depending on sources. So if you were somehow to gain 10 pounds of pure muscle, you'd have enough calories for a small apple per day (60 cal).

How fast can you gain 10 pounds of muscle? In an 18-week weight training programme, a group of men gained 4.6 pounds of muscle: http://jap.physiology.org/content/82/1/298 -- most of the gain in 8 weeks. So I would imagine increasing your lean mass by 10 pounds (just to be able to eat an extra apple a day) would be quite an effort.

One study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3139779/

So considering SOLELY weight loss, ignoring calory deficits from diet changes and focusing on building up muscle mass does not seem effective. Instead of building up muscle mass for a 60Cal deficit via BMR increase, take a 600 Cal deficit via diet and lose the weight in 1/10th the time.

The point is though that you have shifted your daily equilibrium, and it takes zero thought to maintain that. Choosing to eat 60 calories less a day is a choice, which takes mental effort. In contrast, once you have that 10 pounds of muscle, it is burning away regardless. 60 calories * 365 days = 21900 calories a year. Fat has 9 calories per gram, so if you maintain your eating at the same level, that's ~2.4 kilograms (~5 pounds) a year you are losing without even trying. Obviously in reality, your appetite goes up as well, but the point is that once you are muscular enough you have to actively try to eat more just to maintain your weight.

This. Someone who is out of shape will typically have a slower metabolism than someone who is in shape. Also, in defensive situations the out-of-shape person's body can rely more on adrenaline-based fight-or-flight mechanisms potentially leading to anxiety, which can then encourage comfort-eating and lead to cyclic weight-gain.

Once again, everyone wants to boil complex, intricate body and mind mechanisms down to "do this, don't do that." It's absurd. These are sophisticated systems full of roll-on cause and effect, tolerances, etc. not a toaster.

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