Trying not to get discouraged already.

I had a slow day yesterday at work and decided to do some googling. A large mistake. And when I first looked into it -- it said that each lb of muscle burns more calories than fat. 6 calories per hour. I thought that was too high so I put it at 4 calories per hour. For a total of 96 for each lb. Assuming 3 lbs of muscle over time, I would be burning like 200 more calories. Unfortunately there are several studies that say that isn't true. But here is the thing, they say that it is 8 or 9 calories per day. That makes zero sense. And I think that has to be too low. Finally eventually I went to Pub Med and they had several studies that showed an increase in BMR of 7% in men after 13 weeks of weight lifting. Then there are those that say that the increased calorie burn of weight lifting is the energy you use lifting weights no increase in BMR. Then I found another study that said they found increases in muscle mass that you don't already have, non skeletal muscle, is more metabolically active.

So I am confused.

Then months ago I sent away for this kit to test my stomach bacteria. The current science is that fat is gained in the gut. If you have bacteria that is more efficient than other bacteria, it will extract more energy from your food. So you could eat 400 calories of something and get 450. So after four months I finally got my results.. they were useless. It says that my biome is "metabolically active" and that you want that to be high. Which mine is. But there is no explanation for what that means at all. Because if it is, what I think it is, that my gut bacteria is super good at extracting nutrients and energy from food, then that is actually bad... and perhaps a reason why calorie counts never seem to be right for me.

All the other information is useless as well. It says that I have low inflammation in the stomach -- good but then it goes on about how that isn't really a useful marker of anything and then, it says I don't have a ton of strains of bacteria. But then, after googling other people's results it seems NO ONE DOES... and perhaps the only people who would are people who eat food directly from outside.

Finally I came home and did my exercise and promptly kind of hurt my back.