NROLFW Calorie Increase

So I followed the calorie guidelines listed in the book for one month and lost 3 pounds.  (Yay!!).  Now I don't want to lose anymore weight and I want to gain muscle mass.  I was eating about 1600 on nonworkout days, and 1800 on workout days.  Today was a workout day so I upped my calories to 2000. It seems like a crazy amount of food to me.  I could put away that much easily when I had my old bad habits (lots of junk), but when you are eating only healthy food - it is a large volume of food.  I guess I should do this for another month and see what happens.  It just seems to go against the grain to eat that much when you are still trying to burn some fat and build muscle.  I am only five feet tall by the way.  Any body else eating that much and maintaining overall weight while building muscle? 

Is it even possible to build muscle while maintaining weight? From what I heard you need to run calorie surplass. I am very curious about this also.

That's my understanding from what I've read, that you aren't going to gain muscle mass unless you're in a surplus.  But, you can gain strength while maintaining your weight and lose body fat.

I'm 5'5" and maintaining at a range of 141ish/145ish.  I'm eating around 2200 - 2300 calories on my workout days.  Even with that some days I get ridiculously hungry.

I too upped my calories a about 2 weeks before I began the workouts. I upped them to maintenance level and have lost one pound. I'll review in 4 weeks my results and then decide if I will eat more on workout days. Right now, I'm having a hard time to eat more protein.

OK, so I think I will go with 1800/2000.  That is probably a surplus for me.  I guess I should expect the scale to go up a little.  That will be the hard part.  But I will try not to weigh for one month.  We'll see how it goes. 

i'm actually only eating about 1500 cals/day and working out 5 days/wk and i'm slowly gaining. strange. how does that work, i wonder.

As I was thinking about all this last night, I remembered a thread from a few months ago that talked about lean recomposition that had a lot of good information in it, and many useful links.  Thought I'd throw it out there again.

http://caloriecount.about.com/lean-recomposit ion-ft103634

Thanks meganr.  The links to articles about lean recompositioning were very helpful.  I think I will try to build muscle this month which will mean eating mainenance on non-lifting days and little more on lifting days.  It will be fun I think.

Alyssa, I saw your post in health and support.  You need to gain weight right??  You said you got down to 97 pounds - not good.  Let your body heal, eat.  Don't get on the scale, just eat.  Stay at your 1500 for a little while, then try to get up to 1800.  Then go from there.  I have very little experience with the refeeding process, but just be good to yourself and feed your body!  Don't be afraid to reach out for help if you need it.