Does running and stair climbing cause you to gain muscle?!

So...what are you saying? You don’t want to be strong, toned and thin? You want to be weak and skinny-fat with a high BF% (body fat percentage) while doing the most boring workout ever and trying to find ways to get out of it while eating less and focusing on some stupid scale?

What is wrong with you? Do you have musculophobia? (Fear of muscle mass). Oh gosh, you might have gained a pound of muscle mass in a month...stop the presses!

I should appease you right here. Do not worry, you’re a woman, you do not have the male hormones to build up a lot of muscle mass.
Your boyfriend can gain 5 pounds of muscle mass a month...you cannot.
You’re not a professional model in some ads for some thingamajig useless piece of exercise equipment in some infomercials or some ads for weight loss. Those women are professionals. They work out for hours using huge and scary gym weight machines and take male hormones supplements. I know: they look ugly and unladylike but do not worry; you’ll never look like that.

Even a woman looking good while being muscular, like Hilary Swank in the movie “Million Dollar Baby”, playing a boxer (like Laila Ali), still had to train like an athlete for months with several personal trainers for 4 to 5 hours a day and reach the strength limits of the human body and she ate a lot to achieve that. Gosh, that girl is pure commitment. To train her legs, they made her push a SUV in neutral gear in the parking lot (she gained 19 pounds of muscle mass, an Oscar for Best Actress and a few million dollars paycheck).


When getting in shape, you should feel lucky if you’re able to gain ONE pound of muscle mass a month doing calisthenics (using your own body as weight) and using small weights (I don’t think you’re pushing any car in any parking lot).
I can gain a pound of muscle mass a month because I know what I’m doing, when getting in shape (which mean I was out of shape to start), gaining 3 pounds of muscle mass in 3 months, tripling/quadrupling my physical strength (depending on which muscle you’re talking about), getting thinner, losing a dress size, without losing weight (also doing a lot of aerobics to lose fat reserves while gaining muscle mass).

For the same mass, muscle mass is 3 times heavier than body fat (or you could say muscle mass takes 3 times less space than body fat for the same weight so you get thinner without even losing weight).

Get rid of your scale if you cannot differentiate between body fat loss, good muscle mass gain and huge irrelevant and temporary water/waste fluctuations (or at least store it in some closet for a while). Use a tape measure on a monthly basis.

Muscle mass is the weight loss miracle. Not only does it make you look better, thinner and toner but also makes you stronger so your aerobics get easier and more efficient and you burn more calories while exercising.
Once you get more muscle mass, your metabolism goes up on a 24/7 basis. Each pound of added muscle mass needs 35/50 calories a day to maintain (not even counting the calories for the exercise). It’s 12 to 18 thousand calories a year…it’s 3 to 5 pounds of body fat a year that you would either lose or at least not gain (if you eat it). And that is just for one pound of extra added muscle mass.
Also on those days when you’re resting and feeling a little soreness because your muscles are repairing stronger, you can rest assure that you’re burning a lot of calories even if you’re not moving.

Start by just doing calisthenics (crunches, lunges, squats, pushups...using your own body as weight). If you’re out of shape, it is okay as calisthenics adapt to you and not the other way around. Even when I’m in shape, I could never do floor pushups. My skinny arms would not stand a chance of supporting my upper body weight, which is good as I want to protect my joints (elbows...shoulders...).
Start with wall pushups and then gradually move down to desk/dresser pushups. If you can only do a few pushups, lunges or squats before feeling the burn, then just do that...when you feel the burn, you stop as you damaged your muscle fiber so your body will take a few days to repair stronger while you rest. Calisthenics are not about the number of reps but just feeling the burn and stopping. Next session, you’ll be able to add a couple of reps before feeling the burn. So you get stronger and stronger, toner and thinner with the SAME physical effort.

Start with calisthenics and then get 2.5lbs, 5lbs and 8lbs dumbbells and some wrist/ankle weights like 1.5lbs, 2.5lbs and 5lbs adjustable (1 to 5) so you can use small weights at home.

(Y!A limit the size of the answers so I’ll have to use my secondary account to post the end of my answer...)

Gaining muscle. Muscles weigh more then fat so be proud of it :)

MAKES YOU LEANER

the muscle gain you fear will simply not happen to you, as you are female.

your weight loss could have happened as a result of several different factors all coinciding together.

an increase of muscle all occurs when muscle groups are stimulated enough to keep them active. so I would bet that your legs may have sized up slightly.

weight loss will cease at a certain point in any weight loss plan, this means that you are eating close to what's called a maintenance amount of calories. which is a good thing!

using standard scales to weight in first thing upon waking will give the most accurate reading, as you will have fasted for several hours over night. if you use bio electric scales you will also get a body fat percentage reading, which gives more insight to how much lean mass percentage you have. (which may explain why you initially lost weight, then stopped losing weight but got slimmer). Although simply taking a hip and waist measurement once a week upon waking will provide pretty much the same information. When a person loses body fat their hip and waist measurements go down because that's where most people tend to store excess body fat. As your clothes are better fitting that suggests you are losing body fat, and as your weight is the same/or more suggests you are retaining and maybe even building some lean mass (muscle) which is a good thing again! Muscle weighs more than fat, hence the conflicting info.

I would suggest you stick at what you are doing and simply take your hip and waist measurements once a week (write the down), and when your measurements have not changed after two weeks, and you wish to lose a little more weight, then look at our diet. The best foods to temporarily eliminate are high processed starchy and sugary carbohydrate foods. Don't go low fat, women need approx 30+% fat in their diets (healthy fats) and you also need a decent amount of protein in your diet to help build/maintain muscle.

(Here’s the end of my answer)

You’re doing the most boring workout ever. Using a treadmill and climbing stairs (If I would do that, I would hope somebody would come in with a stick and hit me in the head to end my suffering). For over a month? So you lasted a month so far? No wonder you’re trying to get out of this. If only somebody could tell you what you want to hear...that you’re gaining muscle mass, scaring the bejesus musculophobic you and that you’re not losing weight despite your effort...so what? You might as well give up, right?

What do you mean “dieting even more”? You either have a bad diet or a good diet, not a more or less one. A bad diet is too much food or not enough food, junk food, not enough nutrients...A good diet is a healthy diet and eating what you need to cover your BMR, your growth and your physical activity. If you need to lose body fat, you need to use fat reserves for energy while exercising, but you still need to eat enough to cover your BMR and your growth.

You should eat enough calories to cover your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) or your body will adapt to a low caloric intake and lower your metabolism, making it very hard for you to use your body fat. And then, as soon as you would eventually start eating normally again, you would make body fat very easily, because you would have a lower metabolism and therefore regain all the weight you lost and keep going up, unless you exercise A LOT. If you’re younger than 21, you need to eat more when having a growth spurt so you don’t stunt your growth (you get ravenous).

Women’s BMR:
655 + (4.35 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) - minus (4.7 x age in years)


You lost 10lbs within a month so I can tell you those were not 10 pounds of body fat, which would be 3,500 calories of exercising for each pound of fat reserves. You could not do 35,000 calories of exercising in 31 days (like 1,130 calories/day). And then you gained 2 more pounds according to the scale...well, I gain 2 pounds on the scale each time I eat a slice of ham and I don’t freak out about it. I don’t pay much attention to water retention, except when I lose it in the middle of the night and get a full bladder that wakes me up.
You could go down a dress size just by eating healthier and lose water retention (less sodium) and waste (more fiber and better regularity).

Once, I went down a size in 3 months, WITHOUT even losing weight because my goal was not to lose weight but to be stronger, toner, thinner and lose my belly pouch. My body fat percentage went down 2%. I was 122.6lbs and 3 months later, I was still 122.6lbs and lost an inch on all my measurements (I’m 5’5).
I lost body fat with aerobics (walking/jogging, biking, swimming…) and gained muscle mass with weight training (calisthenics and using small weights). It was a great experience because I looked so much better with a hint of a curve of muscle definition and everything physical in my life got easier, like going up the stairs or carrying grocery bags.
I tripled/quadrupled my strength (depending on which muscle you’re talking about). The best part is that I would eat more to get enough energy and a high blood sugar level to make my weight training easy and efficient. And I only had to do a daily average of exercising of 300 calories while eating enough to cover my Basal Metabolic Rate (I did 27,000 calories of exercising in 90 days).



Do not focus on the scale. As long as you’re eating enough to cover your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) and not too much above that and that you exercise, you will lose one pound of body fat for each 3,500 calories of exercising, no matter what the scale indicates.

Losing one pound of body fat does not mean losing one pound of weight because it does not take into account muscle mass gain (which is very good) and water and waste fluctuations, which can be huge and are very confusing and irrelevant since only temporary because eventually, your body settles down.

Using a tape measure once a month to chart your progress will reassure you because when you lose half a pound of body fat (the best weekly body fat loss...1750 calories of exercising) but gain some muscle mass and some water weight so you don’t lose any weight on the scale…it’s a little depressing, when, in fact, you should be happy, and you get happy when you use a tape measure and lose half an inch somewhere, or even a quarter of an inch (like the thighs) even if you did not lose any weight on the scale.