Building muscle and #s on the scale

jalisa3080
jalisa3080 Posts: 19 Member
in Motivation and Support
Let me start by saying that I've been hitting this healthy eating thing pretty hard Since I made up my mind to and I'm very proud of myself.

This time around I have been using the weight room religiously whenever I make it to the gym. I'm already starting to see and feel muscles where I had them before and even some I never noticed. This is all great and I'm happy with this part but I'm wondering about the scale.

I dropped about 12lbs in about 3weeks from my start point but now I seem to be staying at the same weight. I know that muscle weighs more than fat but something doesn't seem quite right. At what point will I begin to see a loss of lbs again? I realize we are all different and I shouldn't just focus on the scale but seems like I've plateaued very early in my process.

My eating has changed (back to what I was eating when I was healthy and active before) and I eat lots of greens, cut out cheese, alcohol and drink 10+glasses of water a day. When I go to the gym I do different exercises so my body doesn't get used to the same old stuff (which I never did before). What else am I missing??? I have a desk job so I don't get much exercise during the day and don't work in a safe area so taking a walk outside isn't a good idea.

Any ideas and feedback would be greatly appreciated!!!

Replies

  • SideSteel
    SideSteel Posts: 11,068 Member
    How long have you been stalled? I'd wait at least a couple of weeks before reacting.

    A few things to note:

    1) Weigh yourself daily under identical conditions. Take an average of 7 days of weigh ins and call this your weekly average weight. Compare week to week averages so that it smooths out day to day fluctuations in weight that naturally occur.

    2) Regarding your training program, you actually don't want to "change things up constantly" like some people may tell you. You will be much better off adding repetitions, or adding sets, or adding load, or a combination of all of that, to a small set of exercises.

    So in other words it might look something like this (and I'm just making this up to illustrate my point):

    Day 1, Week 1
    Squat 3x5@80lbs
    Bench 3x8@65lbs
    Deadlift 2x5@95lbs
    Lat Pulldown 3x12@60lbs
    DB Overhead Press 3x8@15lbs

    Day 1, Week 2
    Squat 3x5@85lbs
    Bench 3x9@65lbs
    Deadlift 2x5@100lbs
    Lat Pulldown 3x13@60lbs
    DB Overhead Press 3x9@15lbs


    This is just an example so you can see how you might apply progression from week 1 to week 2 looking at a single day of training. Day 2 and Day 3 (and maybe 4 or 5 if you train that often!) may look different, but hopefully this serves it's intended purpose of illustrating.
  • jalisa3080
    jalisa3080 Posts: 19 Member
    Oh Man, this is super helpful!!! Thank you so much for taking the time to share all this with me!! I really appreciate it!!
  • jalisa3080
    jalisa3080 Posts: 19 Member
    Oh and I've been stalled about 2weeks...
  • SideSteel
    SideSteel Posts: 11,068 Member
    jalisa3080 wrote: »
    Oh and I've been stalled about 2weeks...

    If you were my client I would take your daily calorie and macronutrient intake and average them out in a spreadsheet and I'd also look at difference in AVERAGE weight over those two weeks. If you were truly stalled I would have a discussion with you about how you feel satiety wise, how you feel about the idea of reducing intake OR increasing activity OR both, and finally I would ask you some general questions about your logging habits along with going over some diary entries to see if the issue could be logging accuracy.

    On that last point, many, MANY people eat more than they think they do. This is not necessarily a function of honesty either, it's that logging is a very difficult thing to do accurately.

    I address a few of these points in this thread about 3/4ths of the way down the page. There are also a few references in here in case you like to look at studies about logging and calorie accuracy.

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10418595/july-q-and-a#latest
  • SideSteel
    SideSteel Posts: 11,068 Member
    I didn't explain that very well --- after all the investigative and conversational parts, the process would be to do some combination of

    a) Addressing logging accuracy
    b) Reduce intake
    c) Increase activity
    or
    d) Wait longer


    And with a),b),c) it's not necessarily all of them at once. It depends. =)


    But hopefully this gives you some direction.
  • jalisa3080
    jalisa3080 Posts: 19 Member
    I will look at the link you added thank you!!

    I'm thinking that at this point, there probably needs to be an increase in exercise. I say this because since I've got back on MFP, I've logged every meal and snack and I use a digital scale to weigh every bit of food I put in my body. Sometimes I round up but never down.

    My intake has been less than 1200 cals every day. Not on purpose but by the time the day is over, that's all I wanted to eat. I always pack a lunch and take food to work. If I'm eating out, which might be 1-2xs per week, I look ahead of time at what I can get before I walk into the restaurant. And I usually choose salad, vinaigrette on the side and water only. I haven't had anything but water since June 12th.

    Waiting longer is probably is a great idea right now too. I have a habit of wanting fast results so I have probably jumped the gun getting so worried about being stalled. I just don't want to end up in a rut and realize I could have stopped it had I taken action earlier.

    Thank you again for all of this. You are clearly a great trainer!!!!

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