Possible to improve metabolism without gaining weight?

auzziecawth66

The woman on the left weighs more on the scale than the woman on the right yet the woman on the left has a LOWER body fat percentage and is way healthier....not to mention sexier looking



aka TO HELL WITH THE SCALE ha ha

Yes, I agree that the woman on the left has higher muscle (with a low, but healthy bf%). She looks better and is healthier. But, I think it is very inaccurate to say that the woman on the right has a higher body fat percentage. She looks to me like she has a very low body fat as well as low muscle. It is probably more accurate to say she has less muscle, not more fat. Claiming she has fat is not going to help people that struggle with EDs. People on here tend to think extreme thinness means high fat, but some people are too thin and it does not mean they have high fat. It is their extremely low body fat that causes a lot of the health problems and loss of menstruation. This is a common misunderstanding on MFP and a misunderstanding about how the math works.

I totally agree with this 100%

KatelinIsArmyStrong

If you have a thing with numbers, be obsessive with measurements, not scale numbers. That way, you can still measure success with a number, but not weight.

xRedHeaterx

This is something you're going to have to come to terms with. There are plenty of women here that weigh 5-10 pounds more than they used to, but are smaller and have less body fat because they weight trained. Would you rather be 115 with a muffin top or 120 and firm?

I have read elsewhere that it would take a woman a couple of years of hard training + drugs to gain ten pounds. I guess it would be different if they had particularly high testosterone levels, dunno. I can't find the link unfortunately.

OP Its not something to worry about. Its very, very hard for a woman to build pounds of muscle.

purpleipod

I'm confused, if gaining muscle will cause you to look leaner, why wouldn't you be more worried about that than the number on the scale?

Sarauk2sf

This is something you're going to have to come to terms with. There are plenty of women here that weigh 5-10 pounds more than they used to, but are smaller and have less body fat because they weight trained. Would you rather be 115 with a muffin top or 120 and firm?

I have read elsewhere that it would take a woman a couple of years of hard training + drugs to gain ten pounds. I guess it would be different if they had particularly high testosterone levels, dunno. I can't find the link unfortunately.

OP Its not something to worry about. Its very, very hard for a woman to build pounds of muscle.

Under optimal conditions, i.e. eating a crap ton of food and intensively training, women can only build about 1/2 lb of muscle a month. The extra weight often comes from a few extra pounds of newbie gains plus additional water retention in the muscle.

ECA67

Bump