[delluminatus]

Gaining 34 lbs of muscle in 4 weeks is impossible, even for a young man.

Even gaining 34 pounds of weight in 4 weeks (not just muscle, but fat as well) would be a serious challenge: 34 pounds of weight equates to about 119,000 kilocalories[1], meaning you would have to eat 119k/28=4,250 kcal a day in addition to your "maintenance" calorie level (i.e. the caloric energy that you burn with everyday activity -- usually 1500-2500 kcal). So he would have to eat about 7,000 kcal a day in order to gain weight at that rate.

Furthermore, gaining weight and gaining muscle are very different beasts. Muscle is only "built" when muscle fibers are broken down through strenuous activity and then rebuilt. This is not a rapid process. It's widely accepted in the weight training community that without steroids, muscle can be built at a rate of a pound or two a week at most.

So either the author is lying about his muscle gain, which throws his other statements into doubt, or more likely he's simply confused about how to actually measure weight vs. muscle gain, and reporting erroneous conclusions. There are many fitness-related misconceptions out there.

[1] http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/calories/WT00011

[jere]

Original article for reference: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/04/29/from-geek-to...

>Gaining 34 lbs of muscle in 4 weeks is impossible

I'm not so sure it's impossible. Claiming such seems like black swan fallacy. Lots of people were skeptical about it of course and I don't blame you for being skeptical. My original comment above was mainly in response to the divergent 2 numbers being clearly bullshit... they're not. I'll try to tackle what you said below:

The calorie part isn't much of an argument. With enough exertion and access to calorically dense, highly palatable foods, it's not that hard to eat several thousands calories in excess daily. A large pizza can easily be 2500 calories; a cheesecake can easily be 3000 calories.

But... your calculation is actually a straw man, since fat requires more calories than muscle. I can't find an exact number, but taking just knowing that caloric density of dietary protein is less than half that of dietary fat and that muscle mass is mostly water, I'm guessing at least half as much as fat, so closer to 1500 calories than 3500. Add a small detail to that in that he lost 3lb of fat during the same time period and the calculation is more like ((34 X 1500 kcal)-(3 X 3500 kcal))/28 = 1446 kcal a day in excess. So he'd be eating about 3500 calories per day. That's actually a fairly typical number for an American.

I really don't think he was confused about how to measure... he went to a human performance lab and used hydrostatic weighing, one of the most accurate methods.

Finally, call me naive, but I don't think he's lying either. I've read a lot of Ferriss's stuff and one theme that has come out is he's really good at finding loopholes that allow him to win by just barely staying within the rules. I'm no expert, but I've noticed that improvements in body composition are rapidly achievable for people who had a similar composition in the past and only temporarily deviated. I'm pretty sure Ferriss was jacked when younger (he used to wrestle).

Ferriss also references the Colorado experiment and the same point is brought up on the wikipedia page (the claim here by the way is a 63lb gain in one month... so you must really think that is BS):

>These claims are considered controversial because it was only performed with two subjects who were not "average," but regaining pre-existing muscle mass.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Experiment

He may very well not have "built" the muscle, but simply regained the existing mass.

[delluminatus]

Good point about the caloric density of fat vs. muscle. It's kind of embarrassing to have forgotten about that point.

However, that still doesn't address the question of how someone could seriously put on 34 lb of muscle in one month... I think even if you're regaining "lost muscle," this still strikes me as implausible or at the very least unreproducible. I am not convinced that having some historical muscle suddenly entitles you to a ten-times-normal rate of muscle growth.

Also, I can tell you right away that the Colorado Experiment was BS. It would take a remarkably naive reader to think that the reported results of the "experiment" are legitimate.

I think you might be right about the "finding a loophole" type of thinking. In my mind, if someone uses a loophole to achieve a metric like "pounds of muscle gained," the accomplishment is nullified in the sense that it becomes useless as a learning tool, and as an anecdote it is downright dangerous... even if he actually gained 63 pounds of muscle by abusing "the rules," that's not useful (although it may still be rather impressive).

Well, I haven't read anything else Ferriss has written, so I don't have any background. But the claim itself is pretty outrageous.

[jere]

Just because I find it interesting, let me just point out a couple examples Ferriss gives (and is up front about) to elaborate on "loopholes":

-Winning a kickboxing championship by 1) pretty drastic water loss to fit into a lower division and 2) TKO by repeatedly knocking his opponent out of the ring.

-Winning a world record in tango by getting the most consecutive spins in a minute.

[the_hangman]

You're really confusing yourself here trying to make these numbers work. Furthermore, it's not really proper to just pull some numbers out of the air with no basis (e.g., 1500 kcal/lb for muscle vs. 3500 kcal/lb for fat) and then use them as a basis to disprove someone else's calculations based on ACTUAL data.

It takes ~2000 kcal/day to maintain an average person's body weight. The only way to build muscle is through strenuous exercise which results in more kcals being burnt during exercise and muscle repair. These two facts alone should tell you that it would be physically impossible (as in, defies the laws of physics) to gain 34 lbs. of muscle in a month eating just 3500 kcal a day.

[jere]

1500 kcal/lb is a conservative estimate, considering the caloric density of fat vs protein and that the vast majority of muscle mass is water. I've heard the number 600 kcal thrown around quite a bit on body building forums. I'm sorry I can't find the actual number anywhere (I've looked), but I think a conservative bound is perfectly valid for demonstrating a back of the napkin calculation in casual conversation.

It doesn't really matter because I've already stated that eating 7000 kcal is doable. And that (grossly exaggerated) number was based on false assumptions, something to which delluminatus has already agreed.

I think you're the one confused about calories. Even an hour of strenuous lifting burns only ~ 500 kcal. http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Calories-burned-in-30...

Ferriss claims to have spent only 4 hours in the gym throughout those 28 days, which amounts to approximately 2000 kcal in a month. Meaning he had to somehow find within himself the strength to eat one additional large pizza in a month. Even if he was in the gym for an hour a day, eating 500 extra calories per day is hardly difficult.

[the_hangman]

I'm not really sure you understand the things that you are saying. You're the one saying that it's feasible to gain 34 lbs. of muscle in one month eating only 3500 kcal/day. Then you said that this guy did it working out for four hours a day, and strenuous lifting burns only ~ 500 kcal/hour. Then you say that all he'd need to eat is one additional large pizza in a month. None of this adds up to a coherent point.

4 hours * 500 kcal/hr = 2000 kcal

This would be IN EXCESS of what he would have to eat to maintain homeostasis, which means that he'd need somewhere in the ballpark of 4000 kcal/day JUST TO MAINTAIN HIS WEIGHT. Then he would need an ADDITIONAL amount of calories to allow his body to repair muscles and form new muscle. I'm not even saying it's impossible to gain 34 lbs. of muscle in a month -- just that it would take at least 6000-7000 kcal/day to gain weight that rapidly, not one large pizza/month. Or 3500 kcal/day. It's all nonsense.

[jere]

>Then you said that this guy did it working out for four hours a day

Nope, that's not what I said. I even linked to the article that has that exact claim; apparently, you didn't read it.

>just that it would take at least 6000-7000 kcal/day to gain weight that rapidly

I've also said repeatedly that I didn't think this was an obstacle, if it indeed was the amount required. I guess you didn't read that either.

[ledge]

My original comment above was mainly in response to the divergent 2 numbers being clearly bullshit... they're not.

I didn't mean to imply any skepticism over the two numbers being different, though I can see how you got that from what I wrote. I brought up both because here he is making one impossible claim, and previously he made an even more impossible claim along the same lines.