Page 107 - 02ed2018

Brandon would get up to around 300 pounds in
Increase
Muscle Mass to
Burn More Fat
Author: Josh Hodnik
I happened to be on the phone one night with
former NPC heavyweight competitor Brandon
Lowe while he was placing an order at a fast
food restaurant. Brandon put me on hold while
he placed his order. After hearing the order for a
dozen chili dogs and an extra-large Mountain
Dew read back to Brandon, I asked him if it was
all for him. He confirmed and started explaining
how you have to eat to grow. This is something I
already knew, but I also knew that eating the
wrong foods could lead to becoming fat. He
would always say, “You have to earn the right to
eat this way.” I agreed that sedentary people
could not eat the same way as people who were
extremely active, but I knew that eating a dozen
chili dogs on a regular basis by me would
definitely lead to fat storage.
the offseason, but his body fat would never
climb past ten percent, even while overeating at
fast food restaurants. It has been proven that an
increase in muscle mass will increase calorie
expenditure, leading to less body fat storage. So
how important is increasing muscle mass to
keeping the metabolism running at a higher
rate?
Flipping through bodybuilding magazines you
will often see before and after pictures of
bodybuilders. The before will generally be taken
during the offseason, and the after will be taken
around contest time. There is always a big
difference in how lean and vascular the
bodybuilder will look between the two pictures,
but they really never start off fat to begin with.
Today’s bodybuilder carries much more muscle
mass than they did a decade ago, and they don’t
put on nearly the amount of body fat in the
offseason either. Offseason dieting has changed
for the better over the years, but science says
that the added muscle mass of today’s
standards is a big reason for these guys gaining
less body fat while bulking than in previous
years.
It has been calculated that one pound of fat-free
mass burns between 8 to 15 calories. This does
not appear to be a significant amount of calories,
but when a large amount of muscle is added it
can be. In a comprehensive research review,
Donnelly and colleagues (1) showed that an
increase of 4.5 pounds of muscle mass would
increase the resting metabolic rate by 50
calories per day. At this rate it would still take 10
weeks to burn the amount of calories that
equate to a pound of body fat, but it is a move in
the right direction.