Buy Walking VideosOne Pound of Fat VS. One Pound of Muscle
They say that muscle weighs more than fat, but honestly a pound is a pound. One pound of fat is going to weigh the same as one pound of muscle. If you look at this photo, though, one pound of muscle is going to take up less space on your body than that one pound of fat. It’s also going to be a lot less lumpy under your skin than the fat is.
One pound is a lot. If you feel discouraged about “only losing a pound,” then go to the grocery store and find a pound of meat or a pound of butter and notice how MUCH you have lost.
Via: My Pet Fat
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June 22nd, 2007 at 4:55 pm
great post.
June 23rd, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Hi, great blog! This post touches on a pet peeves of mine. Muscle does weigh more than fat, for any given volume. I talk about it a bit more over at my blog.
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:10 pm
I agree with the Skinny Guy….I talk all the time about how much more muscle weighs than fat. You are right about a pound being a pound…it’s just how much of something you have…you are going to have a lot more feathers in a poud than you will have golf balls (they weigh more!)
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:56 am
Ironically, you can gain weight after working out on a regular basis… you will loose your weight from fat and gain weight from muscle. which is a good thing 🙂
February 5th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
Like the above poster… it’s not about the weight number, but about the percent body fat.
June 3rd, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Muscle does “weigh more” than fat. To say something weighs more than something else is to assume you’re talking about the same volume, and yes, given equal volumes of fat and muscle, the muscle will weigh more. It doesn’t mean “a pound of muscle weighs more than a pound of fat”. Learn the difference between weight and volume.
July 2nd, 2010 at 6:05 am
I was also irritated by articles by reputable sources such as MSN that say “they way the same” in order for the author to sound clever, but then go on in detail about how muscle weighs more. No crap a pound is a pound. The question is assuming same volumes, otherwise propel wouldn’t be asking.
August 23rd, 2010 at 7:01 am
Enough said…a pound is not a pound.
September 19th, 2010 at 7:37 pm
People who say they weigh they same are idiots because they believe the people who are asking are idiots.
Do bricks weigh more than feathers?
Anyone who doesn’t get “the meaning” of this question is not bright … unless you are playing some kind of trivia question.
Bricks by mass weigh much more than feathers as does muscle to fat.
January 13th, 2012 at 8:22 am
To the above poster John, bricks and feathers by mass weigh the same. A pound of bricks will weigh the same as a pound of feathers. Its by volume that the weight is different. You shouldn’t call people not bright….
April 6th, 2012 at 8:17 am
Fat takes up more space. Its volume is larger than muscle. Fat is larger in cubic inches than muscles. A pound of gold takes up much less room than a pound of muscles because it is denser and is much smaller than a pound of fat… a pound of feathers is a the size of a couch pillow…….
August 19th, 2012 at 9:45 pm
the picture is not correct… those two in the picture do not weigh the same… muscle is much more dense than fat so lets say that 5lbs of muscle was about the size of a twinkie… but 5lbs of fat would be about the size of a loaf of bread. hypothetically speaking…
May 19th, 2014 at 11:33 pm
I think you’re missing the point.
Of course a pound is a pound. The point is that a pound of muscle is smaller than a pound of fat. Not that it magically weighs-less. It takes up less space. Just like a pound of iron is about the size of a large marble, but a pound of potato-chips is about half the size of a loaf of bread.
Your picture is incorrect. If the wad of fat and the wad of muscle were the same weight the fat wad would be much larger, (to the tone of x2.5 times larger in overall volume.)