YOU MUST BE GAINING MUSCLE

Mostly likely, no, you are not gaining muscle. If you have been eating in a deficit and are not losing, it is not muscle to blame, it's water OR you are eating too much.

Can you be toning up? Yes! That is not muscle growth, though. You can be getting stronger! But not adding any muscle.

Did you know it's actually fairly difficult to ADD muscle to your body? For woman, we can only add one pound a month of pure muscle- MAX, and what it takes to add just that pound is a lot of dedication, a LOT of lifting and a LOT of food.

Also known as "massing". When you are eating above maintenance (ie- GAINING weight) and doing heavy lifting hours a week and specifically trying to grow muscle. Its work. a 1500 calorie diet is NOT going to add any muscle to your body.

As a matter of fact if you are dieting (eating in a caloric deficit) and losing fat, you are going to lose some muscle with that fat. It's unavoidable to cut and not lose some muscle- but there are ways you can do it with losing as little muscle as possible. Vise versa, if you are massing and gaining muscle, you are going to gain a little fat with that as well. Which is why this is done in cycles, cutting and massing, cutting and massing.

Now there is a short period of time when you first begin to lift that you can add muscle while in a deficit, they are called "newbie gains" because you only get them as a new lifter and the window of time you have to take advantage of these new muscles is very short, about 12 weeks max.

But why do I see more muscle on me?
Because you are losing fat, which is revealing the muscle that was underneath that fat all along :-)

But why am I not losing while eating in a deficit?
There is no one right answer to this. If you have a coach, they will be able to evaluate your diet and workout routine and YOU more closely to figure out what is going on. Most commonly it is water weight fluctuation or increased cortisol from stress.

But I'm not stressed?
If you are dieting at all, even just cutting 100 calories, you are putting your body into stress. If you are training- you are putting stress on your body. If you are doing both- your body is stressed. Which can increase your cortisol levels and prevent that scale from moving for a little bit. This is another reason why it is important to DIET BREAK after a cut. Your body needs a break from all of the stress it underwent during your dieting period and allows it to restore all of your hormone and fluid levels back to your norm.

To sum it up, you will know if you are gaining muscle because you will be trying very hard and specifically training for that. The common idea thrown around that you are gaining muscle because you aren't seeing a scale loss is a myth if you are dieting!

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