Often Women will say ‘muscle weighs more than fat’ to describe their reason for ‘toning’ up, or in the fitness industry, body transformation. So, does muscle really weigh more than fat?

In essence, NO.

Muscle and fat are incomparable in size, structure, and function. Muscle is responsible for moving your body, and fat is responsible for energy storage and protection of vital organs.

Where this does apply is in composition – 1kg of fat takes up more space on the body than 1kg of muscle does. If you were to follow a high protein diet alongside a training program which supports you in muscle growth, this would change the composition of your body, leaving you with more muscle mass, and less body fat.

You could gain 6kg of muscle and lose 6kg of fat, and your clothing size would be smaller, but you would still weigh the same.

If you put on 6kg of muscle and didn’t lose any body-fat, you would be heavier, but likely around the same dress size.

So when it comes to the claim ‘muscle weighs more than fat’ it’s not true directly, but does have relevance as far as your physical appearance goes.

To illustrate this point, here is a picture of myself – on the left I am 57.5kg, and on the right I was 60.8kg. In both I am very low in body fat, but you can see on the right I am carrying much more muscle.

I hope you found this article useful!

Jen x