What would be the mass of ATP needed to run the Basal Metabolic Rate?

 

The book is way too advanced for me but I have really enjoyed the scientific justification for the training programmes. There's a claim in the book that if we didn't recycle ATP, we'd need 60 - 70kg a day just to run the resting metabolism. ATP is C10H13N5O13P3. That means 1 mole has a mass of 504 grams. So 70kg would be 140 moles. I looked up the energy release for ATP to ADP. The two commonly quoted figures are 7300 calories per mole and 12000 calories per mole. Sources seem to say that the latter figure is for inside the body. So 140 moles x 12000 = 1680000 calories. Now the problem with calories is that when people talk about calories in food, they mean kilocalories. So that's 1680 kcal which is close to the figure of 2000 kcal that I was taught a human really needs each day. There. It works.