Muscle weight???

Please don't get mad because I don't understand. I am just confused by some of the posts on here. I am set at a deficit. I have lost 21 pounds while doing a mix of cardio and weight lifting. If I can't build muscle at a deficit then how come I can see the muscles in my arm that were not there before? I use to flex and it felt like marshmallow. I can see the muscle now and feel it.

Please don't get mad because I don't understand. I am just confused by some of the posts on here. I am set at a deficit. I have lost 21 pounds while doing a mix of cardio and weight lifting. If I can't build muscle at a deficit then how come I can see the muscles in my arm that were not there before? I use to flex and it felt like marshmallow. I can see the muscle now and feel it.

You see the muscle due to lowering of body fat.

You also got rid of the fat, and now have primarily muscle.. instead of fat and muscle.

If you were building new muscle tissue, then you would be gaining fat along with the muscle.. but since you have lost 21 pounds, there is no way you are building new muscle tissue.

You need to see a physician and not seek advice from an Internet forum. If you are at the point considering anorexia you have crossed a threshold that no one here is qualified enough to help you with. Good luck to you and I hope you do seek professional help.

You need to see a physician and not seek advice from an Internet forum. If you are at the point considering anorexia you have crossed a threshold that no one here is qualified enough to help you with. Good luck to you and I hope you do seek professional help.

^^This

Also, there are groups for eating disorders from people who have/had them on this site. Used in conjunction with therapy, community is helpful.

Please seek help. Your self worth is not tied to your weight.

OP you really need to log everything you eat and drink, to be really sure that you are on a deficit.

Log absolutely everything, ensure you are at a deficit and if nothing shifts after two weeks, you need to recap.

Yeah, I also noticed a lot of blanks in your food diary.

I don't eat. If I take in less than 500 calories and work out a lot, I loose weight. If I eat normally, I gain. If I eart normally, I will gain 5 pounds a day and be 200 pounds by the end of the month. I won't do it. It's driving me crazy and the first thought I have every morning is "I shoud have thrown up last night". No one hears me saying this is driving me crazy. I'm so afraid of getting fat again that I will and can and have given serious thought to becoming anorexic...hence I'm begging for help. I'm sick of the morning torture of trying on things that fit 3 days ago and feeling how tight they've gotten so quickly.

Everyone needs to eat.

You are not a biological freak, we are all roughly the same, and what works for other people will work for you. No one, absolutely no one gains 5lbs of fat in one day. You are water retaining because your body is messed up from being starved. You need to eat, proper food, in proper quantities, or you are going to be ill, and you will never achieve the body you want. Eat vegetables, healthy fats (olive and flax oils), salads, fruit, protein.

Cardio doesn't build muscle, it builds endurance.

In fact, Cardio will usually burn muscle along with the fat

Rubbish

Actually that's true that's why I never do more then 40 mins a day of cardio and right after I weight train to help out the muscles.

bump for later

Please don't get mad because I don't understand. I am just confused by some of the posts on here. I am set at a deficit. I have lost 21 pounds while doing a mix of cardio and weight lifting. If I can't build muscle at a deficit then how come I can see the muscles in my arm that were not there before? I use to flex and it felt like marshmallow. I can see the muscle now and feel it.

You can build a small amount of muscle when in a deficit. This is because even in a deficit you are not always in a deficit, there are periods where you are actually in a surplus. Leangains and other calorie cycling diets are based on this priciple. However this is a horribly inefficient process and gains are tiny.

But you can increase the energy supply to muscles even in a deficit without actually building any new muscle, which will make muscles appear bigger and feel solid. But this is a transient condition, quit lifting for a while and it will go away. Lifting and an elevated protein intake will cause your C-P system to increase its capacity (the exact same thing that taking Creatine causes), mostly just pumping your muscles full of water, the same is true with glycogen, your muscles will store more glycogen for use. Again this is pretty much just pumping your muscles full of water. This is lean weight and it will cause your muscles to increase in size, but this is limited, it will only occur over a short time (few months) before it is maxed out, and it will go away of you quit lifting for a while.

Cardio doesn't build muscle, it builds endurance.

In fact, Cardio will usually burn muscle along with the fat

Rubbish

Easy just to say rubbish without backing up your claim

Here's why cadio can often burn muscle...

Your body transfers into a state of mass catabolism just to maintain energy output levels. It has burnt through the energy assigned for standard exercise and now needs an external outlet to keep the ball rolling. The body begins to feed off its own muscle cells as a key source of energy.

Your body wants to burn fat. It doesn't start burning muscle until you are very very low on fat reserves. The "energy assigned to standard exercise" is glycogen, you burn through that in about half an hour, then you start on fat. Unless you are running 4 hours a day, and not eating enough, you aren't going to start burning muscle. I have grown a huge amount of leg muscle by running in the past 2 years. I run about 20 miles a week, off road. I don't do any other leg exercise, so it is definitely from the running. Sure, olympic marathon runners don't have much muscle, but they do it on purpose to be as light as possible. Normal runners have pretty muscly legs.

Sorry but that's completely not true. To build bigger and bigger muscles you must continue to increase the resistance - i.e add heavier weights. If you could build muscle purely by running then 20 year old olympic marathon runner Haile Gebrselassie with strong muscley legs would now as a 40 year old marathon runner after decades of running have legs the size of tree trunks! He hasn't - they are the same! Show me any top olympic marathon runners with huge legs, they won't have, they'll have slim defined legs with no fat coverage, showing off their relatively small leg muscles

You simply can not build muscle on a calorie deficit, or without ever increasing resistance. Your cardio is most probably reducing your total fat percentage allowing you to see your nice defined leg muscles underneath