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How many times heavier are muscles compared to fat?

Question by Franko | 2015-01-25 at 22:31

From time to time, people are telling that you still can gain some weight when going to the gym and building muscles even in case you actually have slimmed and decreased your weight since muscle mass is much more heavier opposed to fat.

But how big is this difference in weight precisely? Is the weight of muscle mass much more than fat or is the difference rather small? What is the density of muscle mass and fatty tissue?

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Of course, 1 kg of muscles weighs as much as 1 kg of fat. Nevertheless, the density differs.

  • Muscle mass has a density of about 1.04 - 1.06 g/cm³
  • Adipose tissue has a density of about 0.93 - 0.97 g/cm³

For comparison, the density of water is 1.00 g/cm³ and bones have a density of about 1.70 g/cm³. Of course, you cannot give absolute precise figures, because there may be differences (for example in the proportion of the water), but by tendency, muscles are indeed heavier than fat, even though they are only 10 % heavier (and not up to 7 times heavier how you can read in some forums).

Nevertheless, trained people often have a higher body weight as, for example, the shoulders are wider and the arms have a larger circumference - in other words, the weight is just better distributed.
2015-01-26 at 12:47

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