I've hit a bit of a wall and I'm thinking maybe you'll have answers.
I started seeing a personal trainer in December. He's a sweet meathead (Ozzy) from the back woods of central NY.
He's got me cranking out 4-600 calories per (2-3)session and weight training twice a week. So far so good.

I'm 5 '2 and weigh 184. I started out at 189. He's been running body composition tests on me and I know that I've gained at least 6lbs of muscle which gives me a grand total of 126 (and lost 4lbs of fat). I'm also down a size - almost. I also joined Weight Watchers a few weeks ago. I desperately want to get below 180 - and now that I have so much muscle, Ozzy's little Comp machine says I don't need to weigh less then 160 to be healthy at 5 '2. I know I'm built for farming but I'd rather LOSE some of the muscle and have a goal closer to 135-140.

This whole journey began 3+ months ago. Shouldn't I be losing weight by now? Is my only hope doing 4-600 cardio more? (I live on the elliptical. My friend just got me doing intervals on it..maybe that will shake things lose). He's got me doing legs 1 day a week and arms 1 day a week. I'm mostly lifting 10-15lbs on arms and leg pressing 100. I'm eating 5 meals a day.. although i wouldn't call them all mini-meals :-). Maybe I'm not getting enough calories? (WW doesn't give you extra calories for exercise until week 3).S.O.S?

Any thoughts you have would be lovely. Is 126 lbs of muscle a lot? Is it worth building more? I love the idea of looking strong, I just want the flab to cease and desist.

Subi- I posted a reply last night, but on further reflection, I think it was probably wrong. I'll try to get back to you later today.

Mel

Subi - a quick question, do you know how many calories or points you're eating each day?

Subi, I thought I would answer your post because it was disappearing down the forum and I felt it was an interesting point. I have had some recent interactions with male trainers and without generalizing sometimes there is some misunderstanding of the female body. It is unlikely that at 5'2" you would be losing muscle if you dropped below 160. Unless you now look like Arnie a lot of that weight is still fat. It is very, very difficult to put on muscle weight quickly. Look at Mel in the 120s, Meg in the 130s or me at 5'6", 137 lifiting heavy but still with body fat to shift. It is important when training to take a nerdish approach and read, read, read. Armed with enough information you are better able to sift through the myths and find the facts.

Sorry for the delay, it's been a crazy few days.

Most heavy women have a lot of muscle mass, especially in their lower body. To be blunt, you are not huge, but you are heavy enough that if you have been reasonably active while overweight, you've built up a fair amount of muscle mass carrying yourself around. This is good The upside is that heavy and previously heavy women rarely have problems with osteoporosis.

Now to the real question: do you need or want all that muscle? Probably not. Unless you aim to be a competitive body builder in middle heavy weight, there is no way that you are going to want 126 lbs of lean body mass on a 5'2" frame. As you lose weight, it's also highly unlikely that you'll keep that muscle mass unless you are specifically training for hypertrophy and eating to maintain the mass. To maintain a weight of 157-160 with LBM of 126, you'd be keeping your body fat around 25%. That's a healthy percentage, but not low by any means. With that much muscle, you'd look downright chunky. From what you've said, I'm guessing that's not the look you are aiming for. You'd also have a BMI of just over 29. That puts you in the "overweight" category, just a hair under obese. While BMI is not the best tool because it doesn't say anything about body composition, there still haven't been enough studies done on natural atheletes with high body mass indices and low fat (again, 25% is not all that low) to determine whether the general risk factors of high BMI hold true for this population. Obviously if you are in good cardivascular condition, some of them don't.

Let's look at another scenario. You said you'd envisioned a goal weight more in the 135 range. That would put your BMI just under 25, in the healthy range. Realistically, as you dieted but maintain your weight training, your lean body mass might drop to around 111-113 and your body fat to the 22-23% range. This is quite doable. It's exactly what I did, and many of my clients. There's another woman on this board who very carefully tracked her LBM as she lost over 100 pounds, and it's exactly the pattern that she followed. We all lifted heavy and ate correctly. Even competetive body builders lose a little LBM (women) when leaning down for a show.

In my opinion, you should go for the "look" you want- as long as it's not the anorexic waif It sounds like Ozzy is in love with muscle for muscle's sake. There are a lot a great things to be said about muscle, but 126 pounds worth on a 5'2" female is a bit much. You would definitely be competitive with some of the top professional bodybuilders!

Let me know if there's any other way I can help or if you have any other questions!

Mel

Wonder if Mel's talking about me here??

I had my BF (nine-site with calipers) done every four weeks during the year that I was losing weight. What I found was that regardless of how clean I ate and heavy I lifted, I lost LBM as well as fat, especially when I got to the last 20 pounds. My goal was just to minimize this inevitable loss of LBM. It can't be entirely prevented - no one can lose 100% fat, unfortunately.

I started at 257 pounds with a LBM of 108 pounds. My LBM peaked at 136 pounds when I weighed 200 pounds and then gradually dropped to 114 pounds (at 135 pounds) at the end of the year of weight loss. My overall BF % dropped from 57% to 14.5% and my LBM showed a net increase of 6 pounds during that time. But there just wasn't any way to sustain every pound of muscle that I gained along the way.

I agree with Mel. I don't think you're going to have to worry about too much muscle once you get down to the weight and size that you want to be.

As for shaking things up, perhaps consider increasing to 5 or 6 days of cardio per week and 3 days of weights? Are you ONLY working out arms and legs - no back, chest, shoulders, or abs?? If so, I'd definitely advise you to work all your body parts! As for not eating enough calories, are you tracking? How much are you eating in a day? If you can give us an idea of your calories, I'm sure you'll get some advice on ways to tweak.

Thank you all for your answers! After I posted, I weighed in at WW. I weighed the same as the week before. (Down 3lbs since I started) BUT.. Ozzy ran the body composition test on me again, and since joining WW 3 weeks ago, his machines says I’ve I lost 7lbs of muscle.

So here’s the food info:
My WW points are 24, plus 35 extra a week and if I want, approximately 4 extra points every time I work out. I'm going to track calories for a little bit and see if I'm staying close to 1800. This week, I let myself wallow about in my plateau, but I know I’ll pull out of this and starting writing everything down again. I wrote Krista from http://www.stumptuous.com/weights.html about this same issue. She and Ozzy both calculated that I should be eating close to 1800 (which is within range for WW if I eat some of the extra points)

Here’s what I DON’T understand. I started 3 months ago with the weight training. On paper I’m down 3lbs and my muscle is down 1. BUT, my clothes are a size smaller.

Here’s the workout info:
3 days cardio 2-day weights –I do back, legs, arms, and shoulders, all of it. (Upper session/lower session)
The other thing Krista recommended was to do interval training for cardio. I’ve switched from 50 min of elliptical to 30 min of 1 min run/ 1 min walk. I can burn 500 calories on the elliptical (according to the machine) and not break a sweat, but the run/walk definitely gets my heart a little higher.

Thank you for confirming that someone my size doesn’t need 126 lean muscle!

I’ll let you know how the elliptical goes.. and I’ll count my calories and see how close I’m really keeping!

Check the Fat vs. Muscle pic in my siggie... that explain why you are only down 3# on paper but are smaller size in clothing... Muscle is much smaller than fat!! Muscle is a wonderful thing!!

wow. Muscle: sexy , fat: not so much. It looks like insulation! (Which I guess it is)!

My weight hasn't really changed much in the past two weeks, but I am noticing that my clothing is getting looser, and I can now lift more than when I started. Even though the scale isn't singing a happy song, I am very, very happy with the changes I am seeing in my body.

I know that sooner or later (hopefully later!) my developement of muscle will taper off, and then the scale will start showing my fat loss better. Meanwhile, all that great muscle I've been growing will burn up calories faster, making it easier to lose fat!

I simply love the way that lifting is making me feel.