My Skinny Fat plan

That makes so much sense, and inspiring too! I will definitely be more mindful of how I lift weights now!

Also, about the 1300 cals thing, that is my BMR and the reason I use that is because I want to input my exercise on an individual basis, rather than guessing my activity level. I say my TDEE is about 1400 because usually I burn about 100 cals in a day. USUALLY. Sometimes more sometimes less.
So yesterday I ate back my exercise calories. And one more ! Let's hope this works.

Just wanted to clarify something for you...your BMR is your basal metabolic rate - what your body would burn if you spent all day lying down in bed doing absolutely nothing, so basically just the energy needed to carry out basic bodily/organ functions. Your TDEE includes your BMR, and what you burn doing exercise (which you say is about 100), but also your NON-exercise activity (NEAT). The NEAT burn includes stuff like sitting, walking around, standing in the kitchen making lunch, etc. This value is not "0" for you, unless you're comatose. Your TDEE is therefore much higher than 1400. You might consider trying out a TDEE calculator to get a more realistic estimate of the amount of fuel your body actually needs in a day.

Here's the unexpected thing. My body completely changed! I still fit into my tiny jeans, but my boobs came back and my sinewy muscle got a nice smoothness over it. So I went from being hippy, curvy, chubby thighs and not very in shape at 132lb to sinewy and skinny at 123lb to firm, younger, slimmer bottom and thighs at 130lb. I finally am happy, and am just trying to maintain it now which is still very hard work. If you see my pics you'll notice the body composition changes.
Good luck!

Thank you jester, cmeirun, aly and nunu!
Maybe I had a wrong idea of the term skinny fat all I know is I want a lower body fat percentage but not a lower weight.
I did use that calculator and it says my TDEE with NEAT (thanks for that definition, cmeirun) is 1648. That's huge! 348 extra calories just by sitting around in school all day? Phew!
Ok, thank you all so much for your help, it motivates me to slowly increase my caloric intake!

Maintaining weight and reducing body fat is definitely possible. If you eat near (at/slightly below) your maintenance intake (i.e. at your TDEE) and LIFT (progressive resistance training/weight lifting program), you can do what's called a recomposition (reduce fat, gain muscle). It can be very slow to put muscle on this way, but you don't gain much fat in the process. The other alternative is to cut down a little more, then do a bulk - eat ABOVE maintenance to specifically put on muscle mass - this adds a bit of fat, too, which is why you generally want to start a bulk at a lower body fat %.

Just to give you an example, here is me at the same weight at three different points over the past year. In the photo on the left, I had lost 35 lbs doing only cardio. I lost another 10 or so, while lifting weights - I lost more body fat, retained the muscle I had, and possibly enjoyed a lb or two of newbie muscle gains (middle). Then starting in September I started bulking and the photo on the right is where I am now - the same weight that I was back in February in the first picture. In my current photo I'm a little fluffier than the photo in the middle, but my lean body mass is also higher than in either of the other two photos. You can see that with time you can create pretty big changes in your body composition - the biggest keys to this (in my opinion) are progressive lifting, adequate protein, and not being too aggressive either with the deficit while cutting or the surplus while bulking.

First off, you look great where you're at! Congrats on taking it to the next level. I'm gonna make a BIG assumption here, you initially said, "gain muscle," which has an entirely different connotation than, "bulking."

My assumption is that you'd like to see more of the muscles you've worked on, not look like a power lifter. If powerlifter IS your goal, cool, forget what I'm about to say.

However, at your size given the former, not latter goal, putting on lean mass is mostly a no brainer. (Not easy) So you've been on a weight loss diet that has apparently led to a loss in muscle and fat. Without looking at your macros I cant tell for sure but the muscle sparing signaling that's missing is more likely coming from your training than your eating.

A guy trying to bulk... on the lines of 5+ kg. is going to gain some fat while doing so. A lady like yourself, who I'm guessing wants to see more definition and maybe a bit more mass, is going to be well served by adding muscle. Remember muscle is hungry, gaining muscle will lead to some fat loss in a person your size if we're focused on performance and strength.

If I were you I'd talk to a trainer and focus on muscular contractions in your lifting routine. It's an often overlooked aspect of resistance training. We think: welp I lifted it, therefore my muscles contracted. Yes, but could you have contracted them harder, with more intention? Probably. Learning to hit those contractions hard is a great plateau killer and should help hit the signaling you need to spare/gain muscle while maintaining/losing fat.

Good luck!

That makes so much sense, and inspiring too! I will definitely be more mindful of how I lift weights now!

Also, about the 1300 cals thing, that is my BMR and the reason I use that is because I want to input my exercise on an individual basis, rather than guessing my activity level. I say my TDEE is about 1400 because usually I burn about 100 cals in a day. USUALLY. Sometimes more sometimes less.
So yesterday I ate back my exercise calories. And one more ! Let's hope this works.

First off, you look great where you're at! Congrats on taking it to the next level. I'm gonna make a BIG assumption here, you initially said, "gain muscle," which has an entirely different connotation than, "bulking."

My assumption is that you'd like to see more of the muscles you've worked on, not look like a power lifter. If powerlifter IS your goal, cool, forget what I'm about to say.

However, at your size given the former, not latter goal, putting on lean mass is mostly a no brainer. (Not easy) So you've been on a weight loss diet that has apparently led to a loss in muscle and fat. Without looking at your macros I cant tell for sure but the muscle sparing signaling that's missing is more likely coming from your training than your eating.

A guy trying to bulk... on the lines of 5+ kg. is going to gain some fat while doing so. A lady like yourself, who I'm guessing wants to see more definition and maybe a bit more mass, is going to be well served by adding muscle. Remember muscle is hungry, gaining muscle will lead to some fat loss in a person your size if we're focused on performance and strength.

If I were you I'd talk to a trainer and focus on muscular contractions in your lifting routine. It's an often overlooked aspect of resistance training. We think: welp I lifted it, therefore my muscles contracted. Yes, but could you have contracted them harder, with more intention? Probably. Learning to hit those contractions hard is a great plateau killer and should help hit the signaling you need to spare/gain muscle while maintaining/losing fat.

Good luck!

That makes so much sense, and inspiring too! I will definitely be more mindful of how I lift weights now!

Also, about the 1300 cals thing, that is my BMR and the reason I use that is because I want to input my exercise on an individual basis, rather than guessing my activity level. I say my TDEE is about 1400 because usually I burn about 100 cals in a day. USUALLY. Sometimes more sometimes less.
So yesterday I ate back my exercise calories. And one more ! Let's hope this works.

Just a note, unless you spend all your day sitting on the couch playing video games or reading a book, you are likely not truly sedentary. More likely your actual activity level for the day it closer to lightly active. Even if you are sedentary that would make you TDEE 1560 not 1400. I am guessing if you got something like a fitbit or bodymedia fit you would find out you are burning a lot more calories than you think you are in your daily activity.

Looking to meet and talk with people trying to gain! I'm looking to get into bodybuilding but I keep losing no matter how much I eat. I'm trying to keep it clean, I don't want to eat junk. Any tips would be appreciated! New here add me!

Also, I didn't see anyone else mention this but you only really need about 1g / lb of bodyweight to support your muscle growth. Higher is optional and you shouldn't do anything drastic like eat 80% protein. A simple way to handle it is eat, at a minimum, 125g of protein every day. This would only be 500 calories. Then eat whatever else you like for the remainder of your calorie goal.

Huh? None of this makes any sense at all. Men and women don't train any differently, and don't have any different results. Men gaining muscle will put on some fat, women gaining muscle will put on some fat. It's how it works. You minimize fat gain by controlling the calorie surplus. Gaining too much fat is undesirable as it takes too long to diet back off, but gaining too little fat is also undesirable because you'll be short changing the amount of muscle you could be building. Also, what's a "powerlifter" look like? Why do you make it sound like it's a bad thing?

As for the muscle is "hungry" part, that's the most tired body building myth around. A pound of muscle burns 6 calories a day. You'd need to pack on 20 pounds of muscle just to burn an extra hundred calories. For a woman, that would take at least 2 years.

Please stop spreading myths.

Sorry man, I'm going to have to go with the visual proof here and put more faith in success stories than just one counterexample.

Huh? None of this makes any sense at all. Men and women don't train any differently, and don't have any different results. Men gaining muscle will put on some fat, women gaining muscle will put on some fat. It's how it works. You minimize fat gain by controlling the calorie surplus. Gaining too much fat is undesirable as it takes too long to diet back off, but gaining too little fat is also undesirable because you'll be short changing the amount of muscle you could be building. Also, what's a "powerlifter" look like? Why do you make it sound like it's a bad thing?

As for the muscle is "hungry" part, that's the most tired body building myth around. A pound of muscle burns 6 calories a day. You'd need to pack on 20 pounds of muscle just to burn an extra hundred calories. For a woman, that would take at least 2 years.

Please stop spreading myths.

Sorry man, I'm going to have to go with the visual proof here and put more faith in success stories than just one counterexample.

1300 calories is not nearly enough to gain muscle. Your height, weight, and bf% would be useful information, as well as your current goal.

I realize that -_- I am trying to up my caloric intake! I've brought it up from about 800 to 1400-1500.
I am 5'9" and I weigh 114 or 115 lbs. I've gained 2 so that's good. I don't know my body fat percentage. I'm not jiggly, that's all haha.

my lovely you could be eating sooo much more food, feeling firm and fabulous. Let the other direct you towards the right calculators. If you were to bulk, you'd be looking at way over 2000 calories. Your goal should be to find your maintenance levels right now, but get out of those low numbers now! others will say add on 100 or so a week, but I think you're so under, you've got the leeway and your body needs it. Calling GEEKY JOCK!!!!