Lost weight, gained muscle. Confused about my goals. Help!

abbymalby
abbymalby Posts: 3
in Health and Weight Loss
I put on about 10lbs in the first year of a great new relationship, probably due to too much good food and snuggling. (my mother calls this happy-fat). I also recently let go of a long term vegetarian lifestyle around the same time. So I've decided to pay more attention to my nutrition and activity level and try to return to my normal weight a year ago.
It was working great, I eat 150 calories below my BMR, 350 below my "maintain" number. I initially lost 2.5lbs and felt I was happily on my way. The problem came when I began jogging more frequently and put nearly all of it back on! :ohwell: I'm thinking that the cause is muscle gain, because my legs are much more tone and by the calorie numbers I should still be slowly dropping.
The real issues here is that I don't know if it is the muscle or if my body just decided to change my metabolism. What do you think? If I'm just losing fat, but not weight, what should my goals be? I need a goal to measure and stay motivated. If I'm wrong and it's not a muscle gain, then why did the weight come back when my calories stayed the same and what do I do about it? Thanks!

Replies

  • megsmom2
    megsmom2 Posts: 2,362 Member
    I think you're worrying about the numbers too much. How are your clothes fitting? How do you feel? Those are more telling than some sort of random goal number.
  • kaervaak
    kaervaak Posts: 274 Member
    How long have you been jogging? If it's less than a month, then don't worry about it. As a woman you can really only put on about 0.5lbs of muscle per week (max) and that usually requires full body resistance training and a calorie surplus. Most likely you've started storing some extra water in your muscles to help them repair. After a few weeks this will reach a stable point and you'll start to see weight loss again.

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