Fighting Fitness Depression - How Fast Can Muscle Gain Happe

Method2Madness
Method2Madness Posts: 28
edited September 27 in Fitness and Exercise
Okay, so I've been going strong for a full month now (just hit 30 days logging onto MFP). I began at 280.5 and hit 277.5 this morning. I've been exceptionally successful at keeping calories in check without dropping so low as to put my body in starvation mode. I'm usually within 100 calories of my 2000 cal/day goal (that includes eating more when I exercise). On the fitness side, I've been working with a trainer (big discount which made it financially viable) and have seen tremendous gains. I've shown a lot of improvement in just a month and am pushing myself harder with each session.

My waistline and belts tell me that I've lost a lot more than 3 pounds, but the scale is so psychologically powerful when I see that digital readout. Here's my ultimate question:

- How fast can muscle gain really happen in a person who is making significant fitness improvements?

I mean, is it really possible that I've put on so much muscle in the past month that it conteracts nearly all the fat loss? Based on clothing differences, that would mean I've put on close to 5lbs of muscle this month...I thought it took a lot longer to grow lean muscle mass.

I'm fairly educated on the nutritional, calorie and fat loss sides of fitness...but I'm quite ignorant about muscle gain issues. Any good knowledge or links to further reading would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Method2Madness

Replies

  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,294 Member
    when starting out muscle gain can be faster but usually not more than 0.5lbs/week, some of what may seem to be muscle could be water weight. Your muscles store water as you beginning a new program or increase intensity to protect them from the micro tears that strength training causes. So you could have some muscle growth as well as additional water retention.

    There are a few members on here that are great with info on muscle building, hopefully they will chime in.
  • Zara11
    Zara11 Posts: 1,247 Member
    i once had a month where i never dropped a pound, but lost inches. maybe i was calculating wrong. who knows? But i was shrinking, and that's what matters. start measuring as well so that you put less stock in the scale?
  • Peep_chic
    Peep_chic Posts: 369 Member
    In women gain can be not more than 1-2 pounds a month (of muscle). There can be water retention of course. But
    that's why its recomended to measure yourself because that way you see that you are in fact progressing.
  • Keefypoos
    Keefypoos Posts: 231 Member
    it seems to me that the carlorie deficite is about 500 per day which means 1 lb a week so all in all you seem to be on track
  • sparklypoof
    sparklypoof Posts: 9 Member
    I just started w/a trainer too, and he mentioned that taking one's body fat % reading with a device (which I found were 20$ on amazon, and am considering buying to check myself regularly) - is MUCH more indicative of progress (along w/measurements) than weight alone.

    He said, conceivably, you could work hard all month, only show a loss of 2lbs, but if you'd been measuring your bf%, you could see that you'd actually lost 4lbs of fat, and gained 2lbs of muscle. That's a lot better for the ol' brainmeats to process - especially when we DO put so much pressure on that one number from our scales.
  • Method2Madness
    Method2Madness Posts: 28
    Thanks everyone. It does help seeing that others have been in the same situation. I brought up this topic with my trainer today, and he re-did my body fat percentage measurements via caliper. It indicated I've actually dropped a couple percentage points in the past month. :)
  • sparklypoof
    sparklypoof Posts: 9 Member
    that's awesome!! congrats on your progress :D
  • scottb81
    scottb81 Posts: 2,538 Member
    When you exercise your muscles one of the immediate adaptations is that they will begin to store more energy, glycogen, in order to be able to meet the increased demands you are putting on them. When a muscle stores glycogen it also stores water. For each gram of glycogen stored, two grams of water are also stored.

    So simply by exercising your muscles they will increase in weight, even if no new muscle is created.

    This is a good thing because it means your body now has the energy stored to go harder, faster, and longer.
  • TrainingWithTonya
    TrainingWithTonya Posts: 1,741 Member
    When you exercise your muscles one of the immediate adaptations is that they will begin to store more energy, glycogen, in order to be able to meet the increased demands you are putting on them. When a muscle stores glycogen it also stores water. For each gram of glycogen stored, two grams of water are also stored.

    So simply by exercising your muscles they will increase in weight, even if no new muscle is created.

    This is a good thing because it means your body now has the energy stored to go harder, faster, and longer.

    This! Except it is 3 grams of water per gram of glycogen. It actually takes a while to build muscle fibers, but you can start storing more glycogen almost immediately when doing resistance training. To actually build muscle while on a calorie deficit, you have to make sure you are eating enough carbs and protein. Carbs for the replacement of glycogen and protein to provide the building blocks to repair and grow muscle fibers. Don't worry about the scale. Just do circumference measurements and body fat measurements and watch those changes to keep you from getting discouraged.
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