Dollars and Sense

This winter has not been good for skate skiing for me. Although the snow came early, colds, travel, and sub -15C temperatures have kept me off the misery sticks more often than not.

Gym time has also fallen into a Tuesday/Thursday/+1 pattern. I was eating like a cow before the New Year, but now I'm less interested. The fact is, it costs a lot to put on muscle mass. 200 grams per day of lean meat and supplements adds up quickly in dollars and cents. At 10% utilization of protein ingested, each pound of lean muscle cost about $114.

1 pound = 454.5 grams
required ingested protein for 1 pound = 4545 g
Cost of supplements = $55/2200 g = $0.025/g
4545g x $0.025/g = $113.63

Borrowing someone else's data on the cost of various protein sources, I find that $114 is the average cost per pound of muscle from beans, milk, dry milk, eggs, chicken, tuna, bars, quinoa, soy milk, and salmon.

Gaining 10 pounds of muscle mass is going to cost an additional $1140 in food.