Well, of course, you burn calories while you are sleeping. In fact, you are burning calories right now as you are reading this article. The only time you don’t burn any calories is when you are dead. Naturally, you burn much fewer calories while you are in la-la- land than when you are running on a treadmill. People with greater muscle mass will burn more calories than a person with less muscle mass because each pound of muscle requires 35 to 50 calories a day to maintain itself so it is not an exaggeration to say that lifting weights can make you burn more calories even while you sleep.