How do I lose weight instead of building muscle???

ALZ14 wrote: »

It is very hard (maybe actually impossible) to build muscle while in a calorie deficit. It is more likely that losing weight is just revealing the muscle definition that you already have.

One needs excess calories to build muscle If one has excess fat stores those can be used up to a point to build muscle.

That being said, building muscle especially as a female is difficult, i.e, like maybe a pound a month with a lot of work on a good resistance program.

What type of program is the OP on?

First off I love your workout gear.

If you want to not gain muscles, just eat at a deficit. As it's been said before, it's very unlikely that you're going to be gaining much, if anything, in deficit.

Do you eat back your exercise calories? I had a look at your diary and I'm assuming the answer is yes judging by your days end calories. I also noticed a lot of "generic" style entries and cups measuring. While right now you may be losing weight with those, tightening up your logging to the actual weight of things and checking MFP database entries for food from restaurants or coffee shops would be a good habit to get into now.

Another thing to consider is that as you lose weight, your muscles will become more visible. Depending on how long you've been doing that level of exercise, you could have a reasonable amount of muscles sitting under your fat just waiting to be shown off. Personally, I spent years thinking I had fat arms. Then I lost a load of weight and discovered my big arms weren't because of fat, it was because of some fat on top of my larger than I thought muscles.

Plug your weight into a weight trend app.

You've been at this what? two or three months? 6 lbs = 21,000 Cal of deficit.

Divide by Days to figure out what your actual deficit is.

Your feelings of speed of loss are not relevant for an objective decision.

based on things discussed before (assuming my recollection is correct) you should be seeking a slow rate of loss---which you're actually achieving.

Slow rate of loss is often invisible amidst water weight fluctuations.

Water weight fluctuations are common in your age group and common if you exercise.

Don't allow your brain and impatience to over ride objective data.

You're doing fine and unless you have been stalled at the same weight or gaining over a six week period you're losing fine right now....

Too slow is not always good, I admit. Too fast is also not always good.

since your current weight is not life threatening your risks of too fast outweigh the risks of too slow in your specific case!

Plus you shouldn't be eating or exercising differently than you intend to long term, so the degree of effort you should be applying *should* be minimal.

So.... where is your happy scale or trendweight/weightgrapher or Libra graph.... before we start talking stalls and feelingZ