We are told you have to burn more calories than you're taking in to lose weight
But if you lift weights (thus increasing calories burned) and eat a lower calorie diet, you could lose 5kg of fat while simultaneously gaining 5 kg of lean, wouldn't you be burning off calories even though the total weight did not change.


Or if you ate fatty foods and did no exercise then you could gain 2 kg of fat while losing 3 kg of lean, total weight is down by 1 kg. But the Fat gain required gaining 18000 calories while the Lean Mass loss provided only 0-12000 calories (assuming body water has no calories and muscle protein has 4000 calories/kg), so your calorie intake is at least 6000 more than metabolized. In other words you can also lose weight by eating more than you burn.

Am I missing something in the above examples?

The problem with this logic is adding muscle while dieting isn't easy. Typically only the untrained and/or fat individuals can do so appreciably.

Hypertrophy is an intensive process, energetically speaking. If you aren't consuming enough energy to maintain what you currently have in terms of tissue, why is the body going to make that situation worse by adding more of a metabolically expensive tissue?

It's a mathmatical certainity. If you expend more than you consume, you will lose weight. The question remains, what "type" of weight are you really losing? That's where the ratio's really make a difference.

You will definitely not gain weight that way . Possibly change your body's muscle/fat ratio for the better but it would be very difficult . Just eat clean n lean . High protein , low fat , moderate carbs . It does a body good !