A Pound of Muscle Does NOT Weigh More Than A Pound of Fat

Q: Does a pound of muscle weigh more than a pound of fat? I know it has something to do with density. It sounds like a trick? Give me your best short answer.

A: First of all, this is one of the most concise questions I have ever received.  I didn’t have to edit it all to get an answerable questions.

A pound of muscle doe NOT weigh more than a pound of fat.  They both weight one pound each.  A pound of feathers weighs the same as a pound of lead.

HOWEVER, what I think you really want to know is if muscle is DENSER than fat.  It is much denser in clothing terms.

Beach Ball or Baseball?

Which would you rather be?

Muscle  = 1.06 g/ml
Fat = 0.9 g/ml

So muscle is 18% denser than fat.  So, if you traded all of your fat for muscle you would take up 18% less space in your clothes – a very BIG difference.  Actually in clothing terms this would  be more than 18% because fat and muscle sit in different places on your body.

Its entirely possible to drop clothing sizes without a change on the scale or with weight gain.

While you can’t trade out all of your body fat for muscle, you can trade a lot of it.

You Can Weigh Less, But Get Fatter

You can also do the opposite.  Get bigger and squishier while getting lighter on the scale.  In fact, I know someone who just completed an 800 calorie per day liquid diet who is lighter then when she started, but also a lot bigger too.  She did drop fat initially, but the body adapts to starvation by spending less energy and getting better at being fat, so the long-term results are just the opposite of what she wanted – less muscle and more fat, and a much harder time dropping body fat in the future.

Josef Brandenburg is Washington, DC’s #1 fat-loss expert for busy people.  He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have.  To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here.