does-muscle-weigh-more-than-fat
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How Do Muscle and Fat Affect Weight? ====================================
While 5 pounds of muscle and 5 pounds of fat weigh the same, they can look quite different and have different health effects. Muscle is not factored into your BMI, but it is factored into your body fat percentage.
Not all pounds are created equal. In fact, your total body weight isn’t a clear indicator of how you look or what health risks you may face.
Two different people who weigh the same amount can look very different when one has a high percentage of fat and the other has a high percentage of muscle.
An extra 20 pounds of fat may give you a softer, less toned appearance. But an extra 20 pounds of muscle will look firm and sculpted. Resources for extra support
Muscle also serves a different function than fat. Fat helps insulate the body and trap in body heat. Muscle boosts your metabolism. Central cord syndrome is a spinal cord injury that commonly happens after a fall or car accident. Learn the symptoms and your options for treatment. This means the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn when you’re at rest.
Muscle and fat percentages in the body
have found that people with a higher percentage of body fat have a higher overall death rate, regardless of their weight or body mass index (BMI).
Fat increases your chance for developing conditions such as:
This means that even people with a low body weight but a poor muscle-to-fat ratio are at higher risk for obesity-related conditions.
Keeping your body fat percentage low is
for preventing obesity-related conditions.
That doesn’t mean you have to build an excessive amount of muscle. While muscle is never unhealthy and you can’t have too much of it, it’s fine to strive for more reasonable goals.
The recommended body fat percentages vary a bit. The following recommendations, courtesy of Vanderbilt University, are based on gender and age and come from the American College of Sports Medicine guidelines:
These can further be classified by averages seen among athletes and people who are fit, average, or have obesity:
Testing your body fat composition is a bit complicated.
Some gyms and doctors’ offices provide high-tech testing devices that use bioelectric impedance (BIA) to detect fat cells. There are also new home scales that use technology to estimate body fat percentage.
These measuring tools can sometimes be imprecise. older 2014 study Outside factors, such as how much water you’ve been drinking, can affect the results these tools provide.
BMI and muscle
Muscle mass isn’t related to your BMI. Your weight and height determine your BMI, not your body composition.
, however, that BMI is moderately related to body fat measurements.
Furthermore,
that BMI is as accurate a predictor of various disease outcomes — such as diabetes and hypertension — as more direct measures of body composition.
Tips for increasing muscle mass
If you want to build some lean muscle or bulk up a bit, try these tips:
Tips for losing weight
Weight loss is about more than just building muscle. 2 Here are some tips to help you lose weight:
The takeaway
If you have a dependable exercise routine and healthy eating habits, don’t worry so much about the scale. The DSM is a resource mental health professionals can turn to for standardized diagnostic criteria for mental health conditions, including depression…
If you’ve recently upped your game and are concerned that you aren’t losing weight fast enough, try a different unit of measurement.
If your pants feel loose around the waist and your T-shirts feel tight around the arms, then you’re probably losing body fat and building muscle.
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