fat vs muscles??

[sarahm]

hi all- being very new to this exercise thing, can someone tell me how long around does it take to form muscle..i understand it weighs more than fat..when shoud it show on the scales? several weeks? help!

[John]

Hi Sarah, I don't know how fast someone can gain muscle, I guess it depends on a lot of factors (gender, age, genetics, how much muscle you have already) but from what I have read, an adult body cannot really create protein, which is used in muscles. Therefore, you'll never gain more than what you eat in protein. Or that's my understanding of it.

Also, some people seem to think that muscle is a lot denser than fat, well it's only 20% denser.

[sarahm]

hi john-thanks for that! but i am more confused than ever re-muscles..am i not supposed to be making lean tissue in order to burn calories...how do i do this??? help!

[Jaded]

ruuning is good

[onthedecrease]

for starters, it will generally take a few months before you notice a solid muscle bulk up and this only occurs if your consuming enough cals and protein.

You will begin to experience a growth in lean muscle mass which will begin within a week or two, in the beginning after starting weights and an increase in cardio you may find your weight will either hold steady or increase by a small margin.

Yes muscle does weigh more than fat, buts its not by much, the real difference comes because muscle takes up so much less room in your body than fat which makes you're body appear smaller.

Dont let all the specifics get you bogged down, its great that youre working out and a combination of cardio and weights/stretching is needed to form a complete program. If you're really interested in weights and muscle definition I would suggest Oxygen magazine, its really informative. For a general health and fitness I reccomend Australian womens health and fitness. Hope this helps clear up some of your confusion.

[fi_112]

You could get your body fat percentage measured by a trainer (or digital scales, but they are less accurate). That way, you know when that % goes down you've lost fat, so if the scales don't move, you've replaced the fat with lean muscle xx

[geowilson20]

It's pretty hard to figure out what goal should be the most important. I was in a similar situation after dieting down. Although I wanted to put more muscle on after, I didn't want any fat gain. But then I just said to myself, if I'm trying to limit fat gain, I'm also gonna be limiting muscle gain, they're just two opposite things.

[Marina_J]

I completely agree with John’s Views.

[Linda Wooldridge]

Hi there, The more muscle you have the more calories your body will burn. The best way to create muscle is through weight training of some description. You don't have to worry about bulking up because women don't have enough testosterone to really do that. All those women who body build and look huge are generally on steroids or are just miraculously genetically blessed. If you have never done any weight training before then definitely start off with light weights and slowly start to build up. The fastest way to increase muscle tissue is to do as many repetitions of each exercise as it takes to achieve absolute exhaustion in the muscle (meaning you couldn't lift another rep if you tried). Obviously you would need to use a challenging weight so that you don't have to do a million reps. If you can do around 20 reps at most, that would be a good weight to start with. It's a bit of trial and error when you are first starting out.

Definitely make sure that you always write down what weight you used for what muscle group and how many reps you did. That way you can always try to beat your last effort.

I am not sure how familiar you are with weight training so you may want to get someone's advice to start you off on a good program, perhaps a personal trainer at your gym?

Along with the weight training you definitely want to do some cardio to keep burning the fat off the muscle so that you actually get to see the definition. I believe that interval training is definitely the most effective way to burn fat. So whatever cardio equipment you are using you do one interval at top speed until you are totally exhausted, then slow down to active recovery until you are ready to speed up again. This way is much more effective than doing endurance cardio where you stay at the same level the whole time. It also helps you increase your cardiovascular fitness. Again, make sure you keep track of what speed you were on and for how long, so that you can keep challenging yourself.
Hope that helps