Muscle Mass Question......

[Ilona46]

I have a question about muscle mass.....I started walking quite a bit and when I went to the weight watchers I didn't lose any weight this week, which is strange because last week I lost 1.3 kg! I ate the same amount of calories as last week but I went for al walk 4 times this week. When does your muscle mass start to increase?? After only walking for a week does your muscle mass get heavier already or is this way too soon?? I don't get why I haven't lost any weight! So depressing!

[Dominique]

First of all, weight loss is not linear: just because you had exactly the same calorie intake and expenditure (creating the same deficit) on week 1 and week 2 doesn’t mean it will have exactly the same effect on your weight. Short term variations in weight can often be caused by water (retention or flushing, depending on what you have been eating and/or doing), hormonal cycle (for women) etc. You should take a longer-term perspective: if you are consistent and keep doing the right things (in terms of exercise and nutrition), you will eventually see results, in spite of short-term variations.

As to your question about muscle mass: I don’t think you will gain much muscle mass from merely walking. Don’t get me wrong: walking is an excellent activity, which has a very positive impact on your general health and well-being, but it won’t let you gain new muscle mass by the kilogram. For that, you would need to do resistance training, and even then, it will be a slow process.

Also take body measurements (e.g. of your waistline), in addition to weighing yourself.

[emili]

I second what Dominique said. If you are curious about fat turning into muscle get the measuring tape out. The scale won't reflect that as you will stay relatively the same weight if you are not losing fat but gaining muscle. however your appearance for sure will- eventually and with a great increase in activity that is heavy in strength training. If you do cardio, you won't gain muscle- but you will lose fat- which will show on the scale. Ideally you are doing both. some cardio, some strength.

[Ilona46]

Thanx for the answers! I also learned yesterday that when you workout your muscles get tiny holes in them that hold water, that's why I should drink alot to heal the muscle tear....I do measure the inches around my hips, breast and belly, but so far I only lost alot of inches of my breast size! That's not what I want but hey I can't complain!! 

[Heybales]

Walking - which you've been doing since a small child probably - isn't going to be causing muscle tears because the intensity is so great.

That's why the comment above about progressive resistance training.

Now, if moving a lot of mass around, and switching from total couch potato to even walking, yes you may have a week or two of some muscles getting stronger and stressed to that level - but getting stronger doesn't require more muscle - it requires more nerve recruitment, which happens first.

It's a lot harder to build new muscle than many people think - especially those that chime in you must not be losing weight because you are gaining muscle.

There are many reasons for weight gain from exercise that has nothing to do with muscle mass increasing.

And to that same point - part of your first week big weight drop was water weight - likely both from less sodium and depleting some glucose stores in muscles.

But now the increased activity is causing more water retained for beneficial things.