How much weight does muscle gain you?

[Whereareyouspot]

Badly worded but bare with me!

I have definitely gained a bit of fat over Xmas as I’ve eaten more including sweet snacks that I usually avoid but visually it doesn’t look THAT much. Just a bit on my bum and thighs/hips. Altho my boobs are bigger which is obviously just fat!

I hovered around 57kg sometimes 58kg last couple of years having been much thinner in the past.

I do a LOT of exercise but I moved my focus last year to include strength training. Body weight or light hand weights (5kg). Do about 7 x30 min sessions a week.
I still do aerobic stuff too

I weighed myself and I’m 61kg.
That seems a huge gain to me when I don’t look vastly different. I don’t carry weight well so it usually shows really easily on me.

My clothes are tighter around the thighs and bum which is what prompted me to weigh.

So I’m going to eat better and shift it but I wonder if some of it is muscle from the weights and stuff and I should aim to just lose 1-2kg rather than the 4kg the scales say I should?

Does carrying just a bit more muscle make that much difference?

I have fancy scales at the gym which tell you kg of muscle and kg of fat.

For the last 12 months I've been doing a lot of heavy weightlifting. So I do body pump classes 3 or 4 times a week. I weightlift with free weights in the gym twice a week. I can deadlift 100kg.

I've dropped fat but only put on 2kg of muscle. My PT reckons it's hard/impossible to drop fat and put on muscle at the same time. He's wrong because I have done it but the muscle gain has been small amounts. So some weeks I get both happen in the same week. Whereas he reckons I should have a period concentrating on shredding to drop fat and then a period concentrating on bulking to put on muscle. I don't think I eat enough protein to seriously build muscle. You need about 90g a day. I can't be arsed with all this macro counting, etc.

So I would say it's unlikely that muscle is a significant proportion of any weight gain especially if you're doing body weight and light hand weight stuff.

Thanks Nico that’s interesting.
No I’m not after bulking or doing power lifting so looks like it’s just chocolate related fat!

My shape has definitely changed- I have a six pack (can feel it even if not see all of it!) and bigger quads but can see this might make 0.5kg difference maybe.

So looks like the goal is a 4kg loss after all. Gagdammit!

Putting on a bit of muscle may be making you carry any fat a bit differently, hence you don't look all that different in the mirror. But if you are feeling tightness in the clothes and have not been actively trying really hard to grow muscle, then I am sorry to say that the probable conclusion is that most of what you have gained is fat.

I think that’s the conclusion yes!

When I was running 5 days a week (between 10 & 15K) and hitting the gym 4 days a week i weighed 58kilo. After unless and surgery I haven't trained for 4 years and I'm around 52 kilo but "fatter" well not fat but carrying more weight in certain areas if that makes sense.. im a bigger dress size... so I think muscle can add a fair amount of weight in my case when I was slimmer and very fit I was 6 kilo heavier than I am now with half the muscle mass and zero he cardio.

I don't know if I related this well.... it makes sense in my head anyway 🤣🤣🤣

Tape measures and photos are better for judging this.

I have body analysing scales at home. As for their accuarcy, I couldn't comment, but the patterns are interesting.

I've been doing a variety of measurements since New Year and while superficially I've bloated up to my New Year everyday weight over half term, I can feel it is differently spread. I've been doing RED January and done a HM, so my scales and tape measure agree that I have built muscle around my legs, and that the current gain is more digestive bloat.

It is true that muscle is more dense than fat, but it is difficult to judge muscle gains and fat losses with scales alone.

It's a 16% difference from what I can tell, weight/volume (Livestrong page is useful).

Problem is, that we women struggle to vary by as much as 16% (from most to least muscly).

So what I mean is you have to go from no muscles to lots to see a difference, sometimes.

I think this is interesting. From bedbound to elite athlete, the % muscle mass goes from 24 to 35% (females). Just using OP's numbers as examples. Start at 57kg. Suppose OP gained 4 kg of entirely muscle to reach current 61 kg.

At 57 kg, she was 16.53kg muscle (assuming a very average 29% muscle)
Suppose the 4 kg she gained was all muscle, so now at 61kg she's 20.53kg muscle. That would make her 32.7% muscle now.

Within the ranges of possible changes.

My muscle % is 65% so not sure that chart is right. I'm fit but I'm not an elite athlete. I know my muscle % is higher than for the average person but I don't think it's double!

I'm sure my understanding is partly faulty... but also, Muscle mass is not the same as lean mass. I suspect you're 65% lean mass, and that means everything not fat & not some other categories (?skin, bone, water, our enormous bacteria colonies?).

Nobody is 65% muscle. This is pg the chart came from.

Another article explains lean body mass vs. muscle body mass.

Figure from Article published 2000 that gets cited by Livestrong (I think),

Amount of muscle is usually measured by body fat percentage, so I'm not so sure 65% would be an accurate figure.

About 20% body fat is OK for women, and about half that for men.

When women put weight on (and men) the result is usually because of an increase in body fat. Even for male bodybuilders on steroids it is estimated that it is only possible to acheive an increase of 1.5lbs of good lean muscle weight per month, so put that into perspective!

This is what the boditrax scales say. But now I'm confused because it adds up to more than 100%. Not sure if that's to do with muscle partly containing water?

I don't think a simple scales can figure out the muscle alone.
So 3.4% bones, 32.1% fat, I can believe those.
3.4+32.1 = 35.4. Leaves 64.6% for other stuff. some of which is water, & some is skin, hair, fingernails, other organs like the kidneys & brain....

I doubt you're putting on kg's of muscle if you're not lucky lifting heavy.

Boditrax scales aren't just simple scales, you hold hand grips which put an electrical current through you and it takes longer to get through dense muscle and is quicker going through fat or something.

We've got very similar scales (different brand) at the local uni where they have a body imaging lab as well where they make 3D avatars of people. When I went there they said the scales are accurate. And I got similar readings from the gym ones.